“After four days of confusion and adolescent hand-wringing, Apple finally spoke out about the change of policy that has removed thousands of risqué applications from its iPhone App Store,” Philip Elmer-DeWitt reports for Fortune.
“The response came in an interview that senior vice president Phil Schiller gave Jenna Wortham of The New York Times,” Elmer-DeWitt reports. “‘It came to the point where we were getting customer complaints from women who found the content getting too degrading and objectionable, as well as parents who were upset with what their kids were able to see,’ Mr. Schiller said.”
“‘At the end of the day, Apple has a brand to maintain,’ Piper Jaffray’s Gene Munster, told the Times. ‘And the bottom line is they want that image to be squeaky clean.’ Munster linked the purge to the release of the iPad tablet computer next month, which Apple plans to market for home and school use,” Elmer-DeWitt reports. “But neither he nor Schiller could satisfactorily explain why thousands of apps showing bikini clad women were removed, while Playboy and the Sports Illustrated swimsuit edition were permitted to stay.”
Full article here.
Neil Hughes reports for AppleInsider, “As Apple has officially clarified its new ban on ‘overtly sexual content’ in the App Store, one application featuring pictures of women in bikinis — to sell beachwear — found itself removed.”
“Designer swimwear retailer Simply Beach, based in the U.K., was removed from the iPhone and iPod touch App Store last Friday,” Hughes reports. “Andrew Long, managing director of Exploding Phone, the firm responsible for developing the application, spoke with AppleInsider about the situation. He said his company received the same e-mail that Apple sent to other developers, which stated ‘overtly sexual content’ was being removed from the download destination due to “numerous complaints” from customers.”
Hughes reports, “The developer has attempted to contact Apple since last Friday to no avail, but Long feels like the Simply Beach application has been wrongfully removed from the App Store, because it does not feature any sexual content. He said the store is showing off its products, some of which happen to be bikinis. The pictures, he said, are the exact same found on the Simply Beach official Web site, simplybeach.com.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Apple should take care not to throw the baby out with the bathwater.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader "Carl H." for the heads up.]
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