Apple Bans Racy Apps, Phil Schiller Attempts At An Explanation, Fails

Apple has been continuously banning apps with partial nudity or with content that is sexual in nature. Over the past few days, they have been busy purging the App Store of all of these apps, much to the dismay of their developers. And when you do something like this en mass, you are bound to be the target of many pointed questions. Apple usually issues extremely concise statements that basically give a vague reason followed by what can essentially be summed up as “….because we can and we want to.” This time however, Phil Schiller has attempted at explaining things. He has also failed at doing so in a satisfactory manner.

According to Schiller, Apple has been getting complaints from women and parents about the content of such apps. Women consider them to be degrading the quality of the apps available on the App Store. Parents are concerned about what their kids can see. The obvious counter to the last one is parental control — it has been around for quite some time now on the iPhone. And saying that women find these things offensive is a very flimsy excuse. They are not subjected to it everytime they access the app store and Apple does not even border on hardcore pornography, its too uptight for that by now. Besides, one of the removed apps (SuicideGirls’ Flip Strip that strips women down to bare minimums) was actually run by women.

But the biggest evidence of hypocrisy is the fact that they have left in apps by FHM and Sports Illustrated. When asked about them, Schiller says that they are backed by well-known and well established content that is published and widely accepted in other formats. So in Schiller’s words — if it is famous and comes from a large media house — Apple will keep it.

Over all, this move has landed Apple in to a major PR landmine area and they have so far taken all the wrong steps to ensure that they get pretty bad press over this entire issue. This is has also caused people to think back to Apple’s roots — back when Apple was against mass culture and strictly against the whole ‘Corporate Suits’ typecast. It is obvious that when a company grows to such proportions, it is hard to anti-mainstream because in a way it becomes the mainstream.

Apple will likely remedy the situation because I don’t think the company is foolish enough to want to act as the big brother when it comes to such things.

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