Cover your eyes, kiddies, because Apple has opened Pandora’s Box on iTunes. With the new parental controls feature built into the iPhone 3.0 SDK, Apple seems to have decided that they can go beyond risque to actual nudity in their apps.
The first app to bare it all is called “Hottest Girls.” Although the app has been around for a while now, it used to be just a bunch of Asian girls in lingerie. Now, you’ve got topless and completely naked women after a huge app update about which the developers brag, “You should be happy to know that the new update contains 99% non-Asian images,” (okay, equal race porn distribution now?), and it’s fully sanctioned in the iTunes store.
It does, however, come with a 17+ rating. So, presumably, Junior shouldn’t be able to download the app for himself and his buddies to ogle without you knowing about it. However, parents, don’t be deluded…this “restriction” doesn’t do a lot if you don’t set the parental controls on the phone; it just warns that you are supposed to be over 17, which may just make the content seem all the more interesting to a curious adolescent (as if the name itself didn’t work). Not like kids aren’t pretty adept at figuring out a way around parental controls anyway. But until Junior does figure that one out, he’ll just have to get his fix the old-fashioned way…from all the free sites on the web. Or maybe by using a video search in Bing.
It’s not really like this app offers anything you couldn’t already get on your iPhone, which is confusing to lots of people. Apparently, all you needed to do before if you felt the need to check out topless chicks on your phone was run a search in Safari (see iPhone = iPorn?). And, that was free. But, whatever floats your boat.
Views on Apple taking this course seem to be all over the place—from, the “They never should have made this available!” to the “They should let people decide what they want to download and this is a good move” standpoints. Yep, it’s gonna make the developers a lot of money. Yep, I can see lots of people downloading this immediately. But also yep, I’m not sure how long it will stay in the store due to the fact that they pull the images right from sites on the web, and I wonder if those sites either know or are compensated for the use of the images. Because, that is kind of not allowed otherwise. You can’t make money off of someone’s else’s photography.
What do you think? Good idea on Apple’s part or not?
Editor’s Update: Guess it doesn’t matter, at this point. The app has already been removed from the store.
Via [TechCrunch]
Well, now it looks like Apple wasn't the one to yank the app, it's actually so in demand, it is sold out. According to the app developers ("Allen the Geek"):
"The Hottest Girls app is temporarily sold out. The server usage is extremely high because of the popularity of this app. Thus, by not distributing the app, we can prevent our servers from crashing. Those who already have the app will still be able to use our app. To answer the question on everyone’s mind: Yes, the topless images will still be there when it is sold again. -ATG dev team"
(Posted on their blog site http://www.allenthegeek.com/)
Yeah, I noticed after I posted my edit that other 17+ apps were still in the store, so it apparently wasn't a content issue.
why dont you delete this. Its out of date and no longer relivant
If we deleted articles that are out of date and no longer relevant, we'd have to delete nearly everything's that more than four months old. Such is the nature of the tech industry.
Makes me want to develop a $0.99 app full of google images of bewbs…oh the possibilities.