5 ms·

Daring Fireball: Tits and Apps

• epochwolf 17y ago
  Not exactly a great move on apple's part but I can understand why. I'd imagine quite a few parents would be upset to see adult content in the app store.
  • ugh 17y ago
    That’s what parental controls are for. Also: did you read the article?
    • ROFISH 17y ago
      http://gizmodo.com/5480421/the-ipod-touch-is-this-generations-tamagotchi http://gizmodo.com/5480421/the-ipod-touch-is-this-generation... Look at the numbers for the iPod Touch, almost two thirds of all iPod Touch owners are below 17. Given how many iPod Touches are out there, how many parents know about Parental Controls and how parents give little Johnny an iPod and never touch it after that and call Fox News when they find out about these "sexy apps"? At least in with this branding idea, the parents might blame the app maker (SI, Playboy) instead of Apple because of the name recognition. (That said, I'm all for removing this crap off the Top 25 lists.)
  • pyre 17y ago
    There are quite a few parents that are upset that 'adult content' exists at all, but I wouldn't say that they have a right to try and impose those views on everyone else.
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• aresant 17y ago
  start blah blah apple doesnt like their brand to be sullied by risque material blah blah blah apple's walled-garden approach is dangerous for developers blah blah end Sorry, getting so bored with repetitive nature of all discussion around app store. Apple is walled garden, will do what they want, allowed to do what they want.
  • ugh 17y ago
    Not all walled gardens are created equal.
• tdm911 17y ago
  I had wondered if Apple had removed them simply because the apps were of such low quality. This would explain why Playboy, Sport Illustrated etc are still present. The cheap 'boobs/babes/bikini' apps constantly filled many slots in the top app lists, yet most seemed to be simply a collection of images and as such, their ratings were very, very low. They seemed to have no real content that wasn't freely available on the web. Looking at the ones that were high in the top free app lists, they were simply 6-8 images of women in bikinis with ads attached.
  • cakesy 17y ago
    This is partly the reason, as well as the fact that people were spamming the app store with 1000s of these dodgy apps, featuring a slide show of 5 images. Also, If you look at the screenshots on itunes for Playboy, SI, they are very tame. The screenshots for these spam apps were getting worse and worse. Apple had to do something, it was already pissing off developers, with these spammers moving into ALL categories. Most developers are happy with this decision by apple, check the forums.
  • cakesy 17y ago
    This is partly the reason, as well as the fact that people were spamming the app store with 1000s of these dodgy apps, featuring a slide show of 5 images. Also, If you look at the screenshots on itunes for Playboy, SI, they are very tame. The screenshots for these spam apps were getting worse and worse. Apple had to do something, it was already pissing off developers, with these spammers moving into ALL categories. Most developers are happy with this decision by apple, check the forums.
  • elai 17y ago
    It wasn't about app spam, or the ton's of other similar apps that happen to not be sexual wouldn't still be there.
  • jvdh 17y ago
    Did you even bother to read the linked article?
    • 17y ago
• megaduck 17y ago
  Every time I read one of these stories, I think of Nintendo in the 1980s and 90s. Back then, Nintendo was the undisputed king of video games with an install base of over 60 million NES consoles. They had a trusted brand, a massive library of titles, and money coming in hand-over-fist. They even managed to keep that success rolling, and the SNES was the top console through the early 90s. Developers hated doing business with Nintendo. Nintendo put every game through a rigorous review process, and stripped out anything that they found objectionable. This castrated a lot of games like Mortal Kombat and Final Fight, and ensured that some titles never came to market at all. Nintendo also charged a licensing fee, and ensured that only licensed games could be played. In order to distribute games, publishers had to buy the cartridges from Nintendo at pretty hefty prices. This system worked great until Sony came along, and told publishers that they'd cut a better deal. Much more relaxed terms, and a far fewer restrictions on content. Suddenly, developers migrated en masse to the Playstation. Square became Sony-only. Capcom suddenly concentrated on Playstation games like Metal Gear Solid. All of a sudden, all the big new games were Playstation exclusives, and the only big games for N64 were Nintendo's own first-party titles. At the time, it felt like a switch had been flipped. I feel a similar dynamic starting to play out with the App Store and Android. History seldom repeats itself, but it tends to rhyme.
  • potatolicious 17y ago
    There's another view to this, though. Starting with the Wii Nintendo has significantly loosened their requirements for publishing games on their platforms. The Wii SDK is much cheaper (almost an order of magnitude) than either the Xbox or PS3 dev kits, the from what I can tell approval processes are far less onerous. What has resulted? A deluge of crap. The amount of cheap shovelware games for the Wii boggles the mind, and dilutes the Wii brand significantly. It gets so bad that even non-gamer grandmas have noticed. In comparison, Sony and MS are riding high, they have a gigantic amount of 3rd party support, people are willing to pay their ticket price for entry to the platform, and willing to put up with a lot more content restrictions (e.g., no free DLC, extensive multiplay/connectivity requirements even for singleplayer games) There's a fine line to be walked here, and I'm not sure if Android has the model right either.
• jrockway 17y ago
  Maybe someday I will understand why sexual content "sullies" a brand's reputation. (Or rather why seeing 99% skin is fine and "family friendly", but as soon as the other 1% comes out, it's suddenly dirty. Also, if sex isn't "family friendly", where exactly did these families come from?) Actually... I know I will probably never understand this.
  • statictype 17y ago
    From what I understood, many of the banned apps did not contain explicit nudity - so they basically fall into the "99%" category. They still got banned because they too are presumably not considered family-friendly
  • jacoblyles 17y ago
    Just because social traditions are formed without conscious thought does not mean that they are without reason. There is a large population that believes it is healthy to practice some restraint on the expression of human sexuality. They may not have a rational argument for believing so, but witnessing the dissolution of the family in the western world I wonder if traditional mores may be wiser than some of us think. Some people with children desire to encourage them to have some reservation in their expression of sexuality, to resist the uninhibited style of our age. They hope to at least raise children that refrain from surfing porn with a handheld computer on a commuter train, fer chrissakes. And if Apple is willing to cater to their sensibilities, they will continue to earn their customers' money. It boils down to consumer preference and giving users what they want.
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    • jrockway 17y ago
      It boils down to consumer preference and giving users what they want. No, this is not what not allowing an app to be sold is. This is Apple's preference and not allowing users to get what they want. Also, what's intrinsicialy wrong with someone looking at porn on the train? What makes it more wrong than, say, reading the Bible?
• MikeMacMan 17y ago
  Does John Gruber have any demonstrable evidence to back up his opinions? No, they're rank speculation. They are, at best, educated guesses. I tire of this kind of blogging. I'm not saying that Mr. Gruber isn't informed, or intelligent, or perceptive. What I'm saying is that he's got nothing beyond that, and that's not good enough for me.
  • MikeCapone 17y ago
    Fair enough. Why do you still read his stuff, though?
    • MikeMacMan 17y ago
      By 'still read', you imply that i read his stuff on a regular basis. I don't read his stuff at all anymore, but who can't resist a title like that? :)
      • MikeCapone 17y ago
        Good point :)
  • mkramlich 17y ago
    A Tale of Two Cities, Les Miserables, To Kill a Mockingbird, Hamlet -- all full of opinion and rank speculation. At best, educated guesses. :P
    • telemachos 17y ago
      I think your reductio would work better if you used non-fiction: The Republic, The Nicomachean Ethics, The Meditations on First Philosophy and Leviathan are full of opinion and rank speculation. At best, educated guesses. (At least then, the parallel is on-target.)
      • gjm11 17y ago
        And, in fairness, how much of what's in any of those would get much agreement these days? The Republic advocates the abolition of families, a ban on poetry, and a systematic campaign of deception on the part of the ruling classes. The Meditations contain what despite stiff competition is still one of the worst ever attempts to prove the existence of God, and the whole "assume nothing and work up from first principles approach" is pretty much completely discredited. Leviathan is a sustained argument for totalitarianism. I suppose the Nicomachean Ethics might get a bit more love, though it's a lot more self-centred than you might expect from the title. (Aristotle's basic question is "how should one live so as to attain eudaimonia?", and that last term means something much more like "happiness" or "well-being" than, say, "virtue".) Which isn't to say that those works aren't historically important, or interesting, or produced by first-rate thinkers. But it does kinda suggest that if what you're after is truth, opinion and rank speculation aren't very reliable ways to get that even when done by geniuses. (Yes, "kinda suggest" rather than "prove" or anything similarly strong; it is of course possible that we're all wrong nowadays and that, say, Descartes was right. But it's not looking likely.)