The answer in no, this is a WP thing. WP should not even allow you to create a page with the slug of “apple” if there is something else using that slug. I don’t event know what SEO plugin you’re using, this is not a feature in the one I use. I suspect that there is something in the SEO plugin because this is not a feature of WP to remove /category/.
You would need to delete the category or go back to having /category/ in the URL.
I would talk to the developer of the SEO plugin you are using or look further into WP itself, but this is not something that ACF can help with.
