In that case, I agree. The problem here seems, from my understanding, to be that what Apple did was more like app -> CFFile -> unicode normalization -> fop

In that case, I agree. The problem here seems, from my understanding, to be that what Apple did was more like app -> CFFile -> unicode normalization -> fopen -> APFS which screws you because anyone can just call fopen on their own without using the core foundation libraries, leading to inconsistent states in the filesystem. You can be higher level than the filesystem, but only a little bit. You can't be higher level than some API that developers will regularly use (unless you do like ZFS and normalize at lookup rather than create).