Exploring an observation initially made by iOS hacker @planetbeing, Shoutpedia notes that Apple has mysteriously begun censoring the word "jailbreak" in the U.S. iTunes Store. While not all mentions of the word are affected, the vast majority of them across all content types are currently being censored to "j*******k".
Apple has long objected to the jailbreaking process, which opens up iOS devices for installation of apps from non-Apple approved sources and other system tweaks. But it is unclear what the company is trying to achieve with its iTunes Store censoring, which affects such content as Thin Lizzy's song and album of that name and an episode of the The Roy Rogers Show from the early 1950s.
The censoring appears to only affect the U.S. iTunes Store at the present time, but it has been in effect for over eight hours now.
Update: The censoring appears to be inadvertent. Searches for 'jailbreak' on the Apple Store now return results without any asterisks.
Apple released iOS 26.5 after a few months of beta testing, and while it doesn't have the Siri features we were hoping for since those are being held until iOS 27, there are a handful of useful changes worth knowing about.
Subscribe to the MacRumors YouTube channel for more videos.
End-to-End Encryption for RCS
Support for end-to-end encryption (E2EE) for RCS messages between iPhone and...
We're only four months out from the launch of Apple's premium next-generation smartphone lineup, and while we're not expecting a sea change in terms of functionality, there are still several enhancements rumored to be coming to the iPhone 18 Pro and iPhone 18 Pro Max.
One thing worth noting is that Apple is reportedly planning a major change to its iPhone release cycle this year, adopting a...
While the ongoing RAM chip shortage is leading some Android smartphone makers to increase prices, one analyst believes that Apple will take advantage of the situation with the upcoming iPhone 18 Pro and iPhone 18 Pro Max.
In a research note with GF Securities today, analyst Jeff Pu said he expects Apple to outperform in the smartphone market by having an "aggressive pricing strategy" for the ...
My guess is that they probably meant to limit this is APPS but inadvertently applied the censor to music as well. Now I'm wondering about movies and TV.
I'm going to go out on a limb and say that executives at Apple did not sit around a table and say "let's remove every instance of the word "jailbreak" from the Apple store including classic songs because that makes perfect sense to do" but instead they didn't want it to appear in any instance like a tutorial podcast or app that might show someone how to jailbreak and it censored more than what was intended.