Mirroring iOS device app layouts, find apps more easily when switching devices As an iPhone and iPad user I have many apps in common and I spend a lot of time swiping back and forth on one device looking for an app that I know was in a certain place on the second screen... only I was thinking of the other device and it's actually in the third screen. 

One scheme I thought of is to map the iPhone's 4x4 grid of icons onto the iPad's 4x5, showing the apps that appear on both devices on the same relative screens on the iPad with iPad-only apps displayed in the bottom row. That way when swiping between screens I could have the same apps on the same numbered screens, with the iPad apps that don't appear on the iPhone in a position that won't confuse things (in the fifth row, assuming portrait orientation - I realise this comes unstuck in landscape but I don't use that much). 

Of course I could sit there for hours arranging manually or doing it the somewhat faster way in iTunes (though I find myself not doing a lot of device syncing since iOS 5.0).

Is there a way to automate positioning of these apps or could there be a way to Applescript this process? Could any of the enterprise device management tools be used to find apps from a list of known apps and to move them into groups or positions (and of course move the groups too) that are common across devices?
Sorry, there is no way to do this apart from restoring from a back up and clonning a device, but that is not ever an option.

The only way to do it is to manually move apps around from screen to screen, and like you mentioned the easiest way is in iTunes.