So this happened. Apple removed Civil War games that have the Confederate flag in them from their App store.
This is a stupid. Apple is stupid.
Good lord, that’s some high grade stupid. One hopes it was some automatic algorithm that pulled them, rather than a conscious decision.
Last night I read that Apple was restoring apps that used the flag in a historic or educational context. They made a broad initial sweep and were working on getting the “legitimate” stuff back up while keeping off things like Confederate flag wallpaper apps. A random quote grab from I4U.com:
The hand-wringing seems like much a-do about nothing.
What?? You are trying to silence my internet outrage! Censorship! First Amendment!!
Okay, now that’s just 9.5 on the stupidmeter. I hope Apple is making all its jerking-knee technoliberal clientele squee with delight.
You have a really skewed perception of technoliberals.
They are certainly not happy about it.
I was narrower than that. 
I have absolutely no doubt that there are quite a few people looking at themselves in the little reflective logo and smugly nodding about this corporate spasm. However, I don’t think that’s all Apple users.
Well that’s good news. Thanks for sharing.
Ooh, I can just see them now. Thick rectangular frames, right? And a soul patch. I bet they’re even listening to their ridiculous trendy music on the substandard iTunes platform. If they knew we were sitting here mocking them, they’d probably be really sad. Well, as sad as pretend stereotypes can be.
A large corporation makes a drastic freeze in response to the fallout from a horrible tragedy, then examines each item to see which ones should be restored and which ones should be pulled.
Huh. Sounds like a good 'ol fashioned product recall to me. And faced with the prospect of losing a lot of sales by staying on a sinking ship too long, I think erring on the side of caution was a smart move.
I remember a volume of Viz’s translation of Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure being delayed for eight months because the anime adaptation…not the book in question, just the adaptation…had Arabic writing on it. Tensions are high these days, what can you do?
“This airbag may explode, showering people with shrapnel” is a valid reason for a recall. “This video game does not function” is a valid reason for a recall. “Let me on this censorship bandwagon” is not a valid reason for a recall.
Well, they’re not actually “recalling”. It’s not as though they’re taking your applications off your device. They are making judgements on what to sell in their store and essentially any reason is a valid reason for a private company to do that. Maybe, much like the physical flag sales, this is a chance for some enterprising person to create AllConfederateFlagApps.com and hit the groundswell of support that Apple is leaving behind.
That’s not how iOS works. By design, the only place an iPad user can download apps is Apple’s own app store. Any alternative app store can only cater to those who have hacked their Apple phones to bypass this restriction, which last I heard made up only about 5% of the iOS-using population.
You guys keep saying that, but Apple never did. They said they said they were not removing historical uses, but they did. They never said “we’re removing them but we’ll put back the acceptable ones.” They said they hadn’t remove the acceptable ones. The quote is already in this thread, but I’ll quote it again.
I actually know what really did happen, and it’s not as offensive as stated here. Apple never said they did a blanket ban and then would put some back, and that is not what is happening. The desire to make things up in order to defend the company is not good.
It does make us seem like we are ignoring the actual facts, giving ammunition to those who think their opposition is not thinking rationally.
For the other people:
What actually happened is not quite as stupid as removing all historical apps that use the flag, but still rather stupid.
Apple removed all apps that had the Confederate flag shown in any screenshots or icons, and those had to be removed before the app could stay on the site. No, historical context didn’t matter. They were just getting the flag off of their site.
It’s still stupid, since they let all these companies think that they were being removed, causing them to lash out at Apple. It’s stupid because historical context is just as important on the site than in the games. It’s stupid because everyone is going to remember Apple removing the flag, and not remember the fourth edit where other companies had to actually figure out what the hell Apple really meant.
Honestly, it seems that the monopoly on apps for Apple devices has led Apple to not give a shit about PR in this area. This has been the case in the past, and they don’t seem to care. But they are actually making the problem worse.
Ultimately, Apple is still going to be remembered as the people who finally took the Confederate flag thing too far. Seeing the apps still there will only make people think there was some sort of pushback, not that Apple wasn’t being all “SJW” to begin with.
No, Apple is in fact restoring apps.
Ultimate General: Gettysburg is back on the app store, Confederate flag intact. Civil War: 1863 is also restored, with the store screenshots changed to only show Union side turns (thus only displaying the US flag).
It was tongue-in-cheek anyway. If it’s that much of a burden, get an Android device and download a million .apk files with Confederate flags. Yay, freedom.
Sounds like Apple could have done a better job communicating what they were doing.
Of course, like a lot of people, I first became aware of this through misleading facebook clickbait headlines designed to inspire outrage.