Following an increase in submissions of iPhone apps containing what Apple called “very objectionable content”, the company has already started removing thousands of these applications from its App Store but some bigger brand ones, including Playboy, remain.
In the past four days, around 6,000 apps have already been removed, according to application tracker website AppShopper.com, most of them including sexually suggestive imagery.
Amongst the apps still remaining are the official Playboy app and the official Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Challenge app, both containing adult references and/or scantily clad women.
Philip W Schiller, head of worldwide product marketing at Apple, told the New York Times: “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.”
News of this move from Apple came when developers received an email warning them that unless they “make the necessary changes” so they comply “with our recent changes” their apps would be removed along with all sexually overt material.
Apple’s crackdown on this kind of content began last August when an app containing topless imagery was allowed onto the App Store after the iPhone OS 3.0 update allowed for age classification, thus bringing this app into the 17+ category. A day later the developers themselves pulled the application.
However, not all apps (not including the official Playboy and Sports Illustrated ones) containing these references have yet been removed. At the time of writing, one of the Top 100 downloaded free apps in the Ireland App Store includes an application called ‘Adult Sex Trick’, which was released on 20 February 2010.
By Marie Boran
Photo: The official Playboy app has remained on sale in Apple’s App Store, despite the company removing apps that contain sexually suggestive content from the shop
