Some iPhone Apps Just Go Too Far – And Apple Allowed It
People never cease to amaze me. And to a greater degree, the fact that one application can be rejected due to having the wrong icons while another promoting abuse of infants is accepted to the Apple iPhone App Store.
Today I was dismayed to find an application called “Baby Shaker”. Apparently the human filth that submitted this application, figured they were being cute. Clearly, the highly disturbed and hopefully unemployed developer(s) of this application managed to get past the app store screening process and was even charging a buck to use it. Sad and amazing.
For many however, this brings up a larger question – the App Store review process is VERY broken at some fundamental level. I remain hopeful that Apple is learning some important lessons here, but still am concerned that other seriously disturbed applications might be slipping through.
8 Comments
Andrew Cousins
April 23rd, 2009
at 5:12am
Agreed. My girlfriend, who is a substitute, told me of a student who had an app for their iPhone/iPod Touch that would make a shooting gun noise.. And this kid took it out and ’shot’ it, on all days, on the anniversary of the Columbine incident, when the school was on lock down because they recieved a bomb threat… Guess who got a detention that day.
Solomon
April 23rd, 2009
at 12:14pm
Yeah… not cool
Danny Minick
April 23rd, 2009
at 12:18pm
All I can say is, what the hell? Why would anyone want to shake a baby? iPhone app or real life. This world is so corrupt.
Basil Vansuch
April 23rd, 2009
at 12:20pm
Absolutely right, Matt. It is amazing and appalling that some of these “crapps” get past Apple’s review process.
Virtual
April 23rd, 2009
at 12:22pm
I agree BUT to a certain point, for example while some apps may be aggressive or just annoying some others are just innocent and we have to think about the people that use it and the way they are used, we can’t just censor the apps from everybody, for example, the app with the gun shot, I installed it, played with it like 5 minutes then got bored and deleted it because I didn’t think it was fun but if a kid uses it when he shouldn’t that doesn’t mean we should ban all apps like that because after all he could be getting a video game that has gun shots and still have the same effect OR just get a .mp3 off the web with the sound on ANY phone not just an iPhone. That is how I see it.
David
April 23rd, 2009
at 12:52pm
I’ve seen the video of game-play of this application and seriously think that it is not as bad as some people claim, it’s badly developed and just bad in general but I just don’t think that it is bad enough to get censored.
Joshua
April 23rd, 2009
at 1:13pm
A big WTF?! to Apple here! Some apps just like some people go way to far in their attempt to be “funny”. Some apps should NEVER be allowed no matter what. Maybe an app ratings system should be in place to filter out items that are inappropriate for children. Something like the TV ratings system that parents could control the level of rating they allow their children to view.. Who knows..
Scooter McGruder
April 23rd, 2009
at 2:55pm
Well I think this goes to show that the only thing Apple is screening for is copyrighted material, all that’s important to them is the almighty buck, why else would you have to pay so much more for one of their computers compared to a similar HP or Dell. Doesn’t surprise me at all coming from the App store.