“Israeli company Tawkon sells mobile applications that [claim to] ‘monitor’ your exposure to mobile phone radiation,” John Brownlee reports for Cult of Mac. “It looks like [Tawkon] wanted to capitalize upon the tragedy at Japan’s Fukushima nuclear power plant.”
“Now Steve Jobs himself has told them enough panic-mongering is enough: in the wake of the Fukushima disaster and the resulting wave of radiation panics here in the United States, Jobs told Tawkon that Apple has ‘no interest’ in publishing their app,” Brownlee reports.
Read more in the full article, including why Brownlee says he’s with Steve on this one (“This just isn’t an app that needs to be on the App Store”) here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Lava_Head_UK” for the heads up.]
Agree! But what about all those who want to measure the radiation in their butts? Or for that matter when they shake hands with a politician?
They should get a geiger counter with a long probe.
Good move, Steve. But watch out, that company (obviously a confidence game outfit) might come up with a UFO detector next….
Now wait a minute, a UFO detector would be fun AND useful
Only as long as it has augmented reality! I like to be able to identify my UFOs and aliens right away. Plus, if it has that cool instant translation stuff, it could take the Close Encounters music and we could actually know what the aliens wanted – good cheese fries.
I”m with Steve on this one.
Yep, we truly are a nation of whiners.
Whining!
I disagree.
The app doesn’t hurt anybody. It’s not illegal. Not pornographic. The role of Apple should be to prevent apps that harm the iOS eco system or are promoting an illegal activity. Other then that, it looks like censorship.
I won’t buy it. But if somebody wants to waste their money on it, let them. I want Apple to make sure the apps don’t contain spyware or malware or won’t harm my phone.
It’s not illegal, but it is definitely misleading. There’s no sensor in the iPhone which could detect any radiation of any kind, but many people may not know or think about the hardware aspect of it. I agree that Apple should not allow apps in the App Store which simply can’t do what they claim to do.
As far as I’m concerned, it’s a stretch to claim that fear mongering doesn’t hurt anybody. Good for Steve Jobs for not supporting this kind of crap.
This application is a scam. It is too bad that people can not go to jail for that.
“Fart” apps are a scam. I don’t smell anything different when you activate one of them 🙂
Seriously, though, I *work* for a company that builds radiation monitors (and reactors, for that matter) and a *true* radiation monitor on an iPad would be pretty cool.
Ignoring the fact that an iPhone doesn’t have any sensors which would permit the app to do what it claims to do, I would submit that an application that promotes the (never proven and oft disproven) notion that cell phones emit some sort of harmful energy is, by definition, harmful to the iOS ecosystem.
Begging forgiveness from @Biz – I should have said “In addition to BizLaw’s excellent point about sensors….”
Phones don’t produce ionizing radiation.
Check this out, it’s quite informative:
http://xkcd.com/radiation/
The guy is an amateur, so take it with a grain of salt (he even says so himself), but he always does his research and is quite talented at visually representing data. It’s an interesting way to spend five minutes at the very least. Check out the main site for his hilarious comics while you’re there.
That’s right. The claims of the app are misleading.
What would be more useful is to bring out a small hardware add-on that slips into the iPhone’s dock socket and that does measure ionizing radiation, together with an app that records the radiation in the background and is able to display the total dosage and some statistics upon request.
How about an app that detects radioactive SBD farts?
Even if there was science to back up the claims of mobile phones causing damage, since the iPhone has no detection mechanism that I know of, surely the only issue of importance is that the App has no way of doing what it claims to do and is therefore just utter crap.
seems few sites picking up this story paid attention to the fact that Tawkon had asked Jobs to add new APIs to the iOS SDK specifically for their app to function. it’s right there in Tawkon’s own letter. THAT’S what Jobs is “not interested” in. big difference between getting an app denied and getting modifications to the OS denied.
since when is there a valid way to measure radiation built into the phone? I didn’t realize there was a geiger counter chip built in…at least the last teardown didn’t show it.
Apple iPhone Radiation Monitoring App… Who needs???…
Just follow this simple axiom…
“When You Glow, You Know!”
Lol. That’s good.
@MDN when we getting iPhone app back? I miss the notifications getting sent to the phone.
The only thing I can think of is this app links to somewhere that has sensors and just pulls information from them. We all know there is radiation in Japan im sure there are places that monitor that information, but detecting it from an iphone.. would definitely need hardware involved.
What the point, most cell phone will give of enough radiation to set of the app and you never going get an accurate reading Secondly the app is going to scare a lot of people in ditching their cellular devices once they see the reading from the IPhone. There is no in he’ll Steve Jobs is going to lose iPhone customer because of an app.
Censors!
Cell phone radiation has rights too! Cell phone radiation is real and demands to be recognized as such via this app. Apple should not stand in its way.
The true believers know. It’s time to spread the word to others as well. Cell phone radiation will not be dismissed! It will have its day in the sun. It says so here in this ancient book I discovered buried out back.
Wow…where the hell was I going w/this?