"Apple can’t stick to its own rules with the gigantic iOS App Store."
and at the end:
"App Store reviewers are not consistent with enforcing the rules, and therefore censorship still seems arbitrary."
Also, there's no allegations of special treatment in the article at all.
Did we even read the same thing?
However I certainly take your point.
And this isn't really a secret Easter egg, either. The supposed rigorous approval process should catch something this obvious, I would hope.
I see no loss of reliance on the guidelines here, but rather a simple one-off mistake to be corrected by Apple. We are of course in agreement that something this obvious should really be caught beforehand though.
When a particular desirable UI feature is available to some but not others, the playing field has become skewed.
If Apple is allowing the appstore process to pick winners entirely at random, it is weeding the best apps since most of these won't be picked in a random draw.