Sheriff told Ars that thousands of apps could be impacted by an update to the App Store policy, which he warned could “lead to a fragmentation of the App Store in unprecedented ways, unlike anything we’ve witnessed in over a decade.”
In his X post, Sheriff pointed out that “many brands outside the US, particularly in Asia,” consist of “just one character” and “don’t receive such special treatment.” He said it’s possible that Apple had to make technical changes to allow the Twitter rebrand to go through, and those changes could have both positive and negative impacts on the App Store.
“The question then was why Apple would do something for Twitter, but not for others in the past 10 years,” Sheriff wrote.
It’s possible that Apple was open to making an exception for X due to Apple’s relationship with X Corp CEO Linda Yaccarino from her heyday at NBCUniversal. When Yaccarino first took over the job of helming Twitter from Musk, it was reported that she had forged a significant brand partnership with Apple and NBCUniversal. At that point, some speculated that Yaccarino’s relationship would help repair any damage caused by Musk’s tirade against Apple last year (which was due to a different “misunderstanding” with the App Store).
Twitter does not respond to requests for comment.