Apple: User - you are holding it wrong!
The spanner is always at 12 o'clock. Either turn yourself or the spanner or your point of view to make it so and then the rule holds. The last option require imagination.
Take the piss after you have tried to thread a nut on a bolt that you cannot see and tightening it is towards you, at an angle. The nut has to cross a hack sawed thread and will try to cross thread 75% of the time unless the moon is in Venus.
So where do you put the rest of your helices on a cylinder or cone, in 2D? In Flatland a screw or bolt becomes a circle with a short hair. The whole point of "leftie loosy" is to try to help with reality as we perceive it.
Try it the next time you are underneath a car wielding a socket spanner with a taped on extension thingie that you jury rigged whilst trying to shift a hex nut at 45 degrees to reality that you cannot see, with oil dripping in your eye. Obviously the oil is a mix of the 30 year old native stuff loosened up with the WD40 that might break the rust lock.
I suggest you do think abut things in 3D and don't forget the other dimension (time). That WD40 needs time to break the rust lock.
"Leftie loosy" isn't for keyboard worriers - its for engineers and technicians, plumbers, and the rest and obviously for DiYers.
When you are knackered and pissed off and you need to shift a fucking nut or bolt or whatever, you need incantations to get you back on track.