Apple Bans Thousands of Risque iPhone Apps

In the last few days, Apple has removed around 5,000 applications from the iPhone App Store because they were judged to be too sexual in nature. This has set off a backlash of complaints, as all of this software had been previously approved.

This company has always blocked pornography from appearing in iPhone software, but a great many very successful apps have been more than a bit risqué. Many of these are the ones that have been recently banned.

The developers for these apps have been protesting, especially as sexually-themed titles from big-name publishers haven't been blocked -- the one Playboy remains, and so does one related to the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Edition. Neither of these contain any nudity, but they do include numerous pictures of models showing a great deal of skin, the same as the apps that were banned.

Phil Schiller, Apple's head of worldwide product marketing, said in an interview that his company took this move after it had received many complaints about the sexual nature of some iPhone software from parents and women.

Apps written for the iPhone OS can run not only on Apple's smartphones, but also on the iPod touch and the upcoming iPad.

A New Development
In the last day or so, Apple made a change to the process of submitting items to the App Store: developers  now have the option of classifying their app as "Explicit".

At this point, there has been no explanation from Apple on what this change means, though it could be a sign that Apple intends to create a special "adult-only" section of the iPhone App Store.

Source: NYT, MacRumors