They didn't have icons, they had a blank screen with a flashing cursor. There was no such thing as a Windows type interface. You would type in commands to tell the computer what to do.
If your computer just shows a blank screen and no icons on your desktop, it may have a virus. If it will not boot completely, you may have issues with your startup files being corrupted. I recently had the same issue and had to take it in for service. Thankfully they were able to save all of my files and reset the computer to factory settings.
Why would my screen be blank?
The icons at the bottom of your Macbook Pro screen are called Dock Icons. A Dock is a place where you can store shortcuts for your most commonly used applications.
If there is no space on the desktop for icons, the icons will run off the screen. Thus the icons will not be displayed. If you use up the space, you could delete icons you don't use, resize the icons, increase the screen resolution, or create a folder on the desktop to move your less commonly used icons to.
if you have allot of them it can
The icons on Chrome's home screen are most recently visited. They are the ones that the user has visited again and again.
Desktop
Windows
your screen refreshes when you close a program causing your desktop icons to flicker
Just simply highlight all your icons and drag 'em to the bottom.
The page that displays the icons when you turn your computer on is called your home screen. Some people do call it the main screen as well.