Apparently Apple uses U+F8FF, part of the Unicode "Private Use Area", to represent its logo. It's not surprising that it fails to render on non-Apple platforms, given this warning in http://www.unicode.org/Public/MAPPINGS/VENDORS/APPLE/CORPCHA... :

  # The following (1) is for the Mac OS Roman encoding
  # (also used in Symbol & Croatian).
  # NOTE: The graphic image associated with the Apple logo character is
  # not authorized for use without permission of Apple, and unauthorized
  # use might constitute trademark infringement.
  0xF8FF	# Apple logo # Roman-0xF0, Symbol-0xF0, Croatian-0xD8

Additional references: http://hea-www.harvard.edu/~fine/OSX/unicode_apple_logo.html http://www.fileformat.info/info/unicode/char/f8ff/index.htm https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_Use_Areas

Well, by definition, the Private Use Area is for private use. An OS vendor can put whatever they like there, as can a user.

Chrome, it's a 't' surrounded by italicized parentheses. Unsuccessfully searched for unicode lookup to find the text description of the character.

Edit: at http://www.fileformat.info/info/unicode/char/search.htm?q=%E...

I found: <Private Use, Last>

Not sure what to make of it. Apple decided to assign to a Unicode character their logo. Does anyone have context?

> Not sure what to make of it. Apple decided to assign to a Unicode character their logo. Does anyone have context?

Might be for compatibility with MacRoman, which also had such a character.

In firefow it's a w with two dots over it. Is it just some unicode point that is unstandardized, and so overloaded somewhere with the Apple logo?

My Firefox renders it as an apple with a bite taken out of it. Probably depends on your font.

Chrome Mac renders it correctly.

Since it's a character in Unicode's "private use area," its correct rendering is unspecified. (That code point's "use and interpretation may be determined by private agreement among cooperating users" according to the Unicode standard.)