In Unicode, U+0027 is marked "ASCII punctuation and symbols" and described as "neutral (vertical) glyph with mixed usage."
While in English, the apostrophe is usually a punctuation mark, it is used as a letter, typically a glottal stop like the ʻokina, in dozens of languages as well as when writing certain English accents phonetically, like Glasgow or Cockney.
Software does not particularly care about what unicode character you use and the switch to the inverted comma ʻokina began before unicode (or software) was a thing.