Alright, I am biting: Yes.

It also transports the idea of "turtle" better - especially when you deal with people who are unaware of the difference between turtles and tortoises, or who know not all turtles have extraordinary large giraffe-style necks. Not every turtle is a Galapagos tortoise.

Consider what turtles are usually looking like, according to Google Images: https://www.google.com/search?q=turtle&source=lnms&tbm=isch&...

But do we need these distinctions? I mean, in French we don’t even have the nuance between turtles and tortoises, both are « tortues ». So whether it’s a long neck or short neck turtle, who cares? Do you often need to use specifically a turtle (not tortoise) emoji where the sense of what you mean radically change? Even if you use a Galapagos turtle emoji to talk about your non Galapagos pet turtle, is that so important to your story?

With symbols, it is often better to have simplified, general-purpose representations as compared to highly specific ones. E.g. it's better to have a highly stylized "aircraft" emoji [1] than a tiny, but screw-accurate variant of a weird little plane like the Edgely Ocular [2].

[1] https://emojipedia.org/airplane/

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edgley_Optica

You might want to add a -sea to that search, as it's mostly sea turtles. Heavily photographed, but not nearly as common as other kinds of turtles.

I agree with the sentiment though.

Yes! (And it seems like many others agree with me.)

To be clear, I do recognize that the Google one is "stylized" in a way that is not going to appeal to everyone. However, I claim that there is something objectively (or almost objectively) wrong and upsetting about the Apple style here. If you're going to do the whole "3D render" style, you simply have to do a better job than Apple has done here. As I said in my OP, it looks like a poor model from a mobile game or a early 00s DreamWorks film. It's simply not good enough work, regardless of whether you like "realistic" emoji art or not.

Yes, and it's widely considered one of the best emojis. There are many videos about this turtle, e.g. https://youtu.be/13SxY1z7JFk?t=25