Apple’s contentious relationship with naughty apps is locked in frigid mode. How did it get there, and where’s it going?

Photography by: Mark Madeo



PARENTAL ADVISORY: This story deals with adult subject matter.

The only thing missing from Apple’s naughty-app saga is--ironically enough--actual sex. There’s enough drama, duplicity, conflict, girls in bikinis, jilted developers, titillated geeks, and destroyed businesses to make a great feature film. Although it’d be rated PG-13, rather than X or even just R.

The iPhone is a sexy gadget, but Apple wants to make sure it’s not that kind of sexy. Much ado has been made over its zealous monitoring of the App Store’s so-called vulgar content and its uneven enforcement of content standards. And when Apple selectively purged over 5,000 naughty apps from the App Store in February, the conversation grew louder. But what are we really talking about?

Before we can look at the current situation, a little history is in order. At the outset of the App Store, Steve Jobs singled out “porn” as one of the things that would be prohibited from the iPhone’s virtual shelves. And despite the current monkey business, it bears emphasizing that there still isn’t--and never has been--actual porn in the App Store, even if Apple critics frequently confuse true, dictionary-definition pornography with the lingerie-catalog and bikini-contest caliber of material that was available. You know the stuff: Simple slideshow apps showing photos of pinup models, prompting the perennial question, “How did these things make the Top Paid Apps list in the first place?”

Dr. Drew is still offering sex advice over his iPhone app.

Apple’s content problems actually began early in the life of the App Store. Six months after its debut, its first “porn issue” arose over text--not explicit imagery. In December 2008, David Carnoy’s fictional detective novel Knife Music became the poster child for objectionable content when word-matching software found an F-bomb used in a sexual context within the e-book’s virtual pages. Apple rejected the book, citing a clause in the iPhone SDK that states: “Applications must not contain any obscene, pornographic, offensive, or defamatory content or materials of any kind (text, graphics, images, photographs, etc.), or other content or materials that in Apple’s reasonable judgment may be found objectionable by iPhone or iPod touch users.”

A little over six months later, July 2009 saw tech blogs going hype-haywire with headlines exclaiming “First Apple-Approved iPhone Porn App” after a previously approved bikini-girl application, Hottest Girls, began showing topless images. But even with the release of iPhone OS 3.0 and its parental controls, Apple-approved porn was not to be. Within an hour of those stories hitting the blogs, Hottest Girls was removed from the store and banned.

Meanwhile, oodles of actual porn companies were making their websites iPhone-compatible, erotic photographers and porn stars were shilling nude and explicit iPhone wallpaper, and all of it was being hyped as “iPhone porn” without ever coming near the App Store. Euro-porn emporium Wild Dolls created a movie interface formatted perfectly for the iPhone, and there are tons of other iPhone-optimized sites available that any teenager with Mobile Safari can find in an instant. But many believed that you could actually find pornography in the App Store. Which you never could. Just so we’re clear.

Because Playboy is a “well-known company already broadly available,” explains Apple’s Phil Schiller, its app lives on in iTunes.

Which brings us to the Purge of 2010. On February 19, selected developers received an email from Apple’s reviews department, telling them that their previously approved applications contained “content that we had originally believed to be suitable for distribution. However, we have recently received numerous complaints from our customers about this type of content and have changed our guidelines appropriately. We have decided to remove any overtly sexual content from the App Store, which includes your application.”

The vague phrasing annoyed developers, but irritation gave way to panic when over 5,000 applications were removed from the store--that’s over 3% of the store’s 150,000 or so applications. Some developers’ incomes plummeted to zero with no advance warning, and the move prompted tech blogs to accuse Apple of leaving devs high and dry. According to PinkVisual, one of the store’s more popular naughty-app makers, its CutestGirls app took around 100 hours to build, and “the administration and approval process took weeks.” Apple negated that work and other projects just like it 5,000 times over in that one day.

It was a fitful time for iPhone and potential iPad developers, Apple sin-thusiasts, and adult consumers alike. Jon Atherton, the jilted developer of the Wobble app (which added wobbly bits to already-existing images), relayed guidelines for Apple-appropriate content to TechCrunch, a tech blog. These included rules about “no women in bikinis” or ice-skating costumes and nothing that could be “sexually arousing” or “imply sexual arousal.” In the first few days after the purge, some apps were removed and some were quietly reinstated with no transparency whatsoever. Apple deepened the controversy by not applying its own rules unilaterally--it chose to keep Playboy and Sports Illustrated apps while removing identical content from small developers.

Sports Illustrated swimsuit models withstood Apple’s recent purge.

In the New York Times, Phil Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of worldwide product marketing, pointed fingers at “a small number of developers” who had been submitting “an increasing number of apps containing very objectionable content.” On the App Store’s seeming double standard around retention of the Sports Illustrated app, he said “the difference is this is a well-known company with previously published material available broadly in a well-accepted format.”

So where does that leave Apple fans on either side of the “should they or shouldn’t they” debate? At the end of the day, it’s a business decision. Consumer reaction has been mixed, ranging from relief to outrage at an imposed nanny state and sharp accusations of hypocrisy. Some think that this, too, shall pass. Most people just want to know why Apple cares so much about what turns them on. Others, especially after the February 24th addition--and then hours-later removal--of an Explicit category in the App Store, see a business in an identity crisis.

No one feels more cuckolded than the developers. While Wobble got the spotlight for leaking Apple’s no-swimsuit brouhaha to TechCrunch, PinkVisual is a prime example of a developer left confused by Apple’s actions. Its accepted-then-rejected CutestGirls app contained photos and videos of 10 models. Liam Colins, director of PinkVisual’s new business development and special projects, says “the app was about as risqué as a Victoria’s Secret catalog, but [it] was rated 17+ in the App Store for Frequent/Intense Nudity... which it had none of.”

Sex sells--even if it’s free. But Apple is willing to forego a bit of revenue in favor of keeping it clean.

Smaller developers with fewer resources are in worse condition; as Colins points out, options outside the Apple’s App Store are “really very few. We can make [apps] available for jailbroken iPhones, which is not our favorite option, or we can focus our app-development efforts on more welcoming platforms, like Android. It’s a sad state of affairs.” Like many in his position, Colins considers the purge to be tragic because “Apple could have opted to implement the parental controls and age-verification protocols that are already present in iTunes.” He sees the move as “punishing partners who had invested in their product.”

PinkVisual, which lost three apps in the purge, came out swinging, but other developers who have more to lose are worried about going on the record for fear of reprisal from Apple. They simply hope to get their apps resubmitted and accepted. Joanna Angel, model and CEO of Burning Angel, is in the process of resubmission, and she explains, “I had five apps live. There were eight others in various states of the approval process that were all rejected. We may be able to resubmit them. I’m waiting on Apple to tell me what they want to happen.”

Other sexy apps made it into the App Store and remain there; no nudity, no porn stars, and no indie developers means no problem. MyPleasure.com’s free MyVibe and Sex Dice apps remain Apple-approved, although the vibrator app was rejected upon first submission (there are no visuals; the app simply controls the iPhone’s vibration). Also still available at press time were Adult Sex Life, which features sex positions, sex tips, and a diary; iKamasutra and its sex positions and progress diary; LoveLine with Dr. Drew, where people can listen to his sex advice; and of course Playboy and Sports Illustrated Swimsuit 2010.

Before the purge, literally hundreds of apps like these filled the App Store, causing an outcry from some customers that prompted Apple’s action.

I’ll be the first to say it: These apps are not hot. In all, the Great Not-Porn Purge of 2010 proves that probably the hottest thing we’re going to get out of our iPhones is a few tired eye rolls. Meanwhile, developers left at the altar are making eyes at Android. MiKandi, an app distributor that bills itself as an adult-app store, currently rules the naughty Android space, and it knows a business opportunity when it sees it. MiKandi reacted to the purge with an open call to devs, posting this offer to its company blog: “We look forward to working with any developer who has been displaced by Apple in recent weeks. Don’t worry, developers--MiKandi supports you and your sexy apps. Come to the dark side. We have cookies.”

And in an interesting turn of events, as this story was going to press, reports began to trickle in that more banned apps were being reinstated. Clearly this is just the first chapter in an ongoing saga. But the question is: Will developers stick around long enough to see how this all shakes out? After all, despite Apple’s scattershot enforcement of its policies, plenty of customers are willing to shell out for mildly risqué apps, 99 cents at a time.

Violet Blue is an author, journalist, and expert in the fields of sex and technology. Forbes named her one of its “Web Celeb 25,” and she’s made appearances on The Oprah Winfrey Show, CNN, and other national media outlets. Blue is also the author of several award-winning and best-selling books. For more, visit her website at tinynibbles.com--but heads-up that it’s NSFW (“not safe for work”).