punkassjim

Last week, Apple started to ban “sexy” iPhone apps from the App Store. Today, in a New York Times article, Phil Schiller was asked about a glaring double-standard:

Indeed, a Sports Illustrated application tied to its annual swimsuit issue was still available for download on Monday, as was one from Playboy.

When asked about the Sports Illustrated app, Mr. Schiller said Apple took the source and intent of an app into consideration. “The difference is this is a well-known company with previously published material available broadly in a well-accepted format,” he said.

Lots of iPhone developers and other commentators are throwing the “hypocrite” flag at Apple this week, but there’s a pretty clear undercurrent that many people kind of agree with the decision while also abhorring the double-standard. As Steven Frank puts it:

Really exasperated by the Apple vs. Sexy Apps thing. Good riddance, but really this is an attack on a symptom rather than the problem.

The problem is, most of us (at least, those of us who haven’t written a “sexy” app, nor do we want one) are a little conflicted about this, because we’ve always been told that “double-standards are bad.” But in this case, is that really true? Does the App Store really have to be an equal-opportunity marketplace? Are you entitled to acceptance in the App Store, no matter what the content?

It seems to me that the concept of “you spoiled it for everyone” is pretty apropos here. When a few people had boobies apps in the App Store, I rolled my eyes and moved on. When hundreds appeared, I started to think that the whole marketplace was turning into a cesspool. Over the past couple months, when the number of them elevated into the thousands, and they started taking over the “Top Free” and “Top Paid” charts, and they started being tagged to appear in every category from Productivity to Fitness to Weather? I simply stopped going into the App Store.

Apple is essentially acting as the new-world publisher, and publishers have always had standards by which they’ve said “nope, we won’t publish that.” Anyone from the past century with a dusty manuscript in a drawer, which was rejected by a publisher, knows that this is just how the game works. You can’t get a bodice-ripper accepted by a “classics” publisher.

Granted, the game is changing a bit in this century, and the rules are kind of still taking shape. But the point is, while Apple may indeed be fine and dandy with allowing some “sexy” content into the App Store — as long as it’s not pornographic — they’re clearly unwilling to publish 5000 apps of that ilk.

I’m glad they had the balls to recognize a problem and to act on it. But this all calls into focus the fact that the parental controls on the iPhone (and iPod Touch, and eventually iPad) are inherently broken. I’ll write more about that on my iPhone tumblr later.

sds:

What I mean here is that it’s unjust for the government to force people to save to a general fund where they will never get back what they put in. I am “saving” into the system so that the retirees have cash today; I will never see any of what I put in. The longer the scheme goes, the less benefit to all involved.

This shows a complete misunderstanding of how the system works.

The only American citizens who could potentially suffer anything “unjust” are the people who are now paying into Social Security, but would never collect on the benefits if “modern conservatives” decided to dismantle the system and “privatize” it. The system would fall apart, and whoever was the last generation to contribute would be the ones left holding the bag.

Sure, the enormous numbers of baby boomers are really gonna tap the Social Security system as they continue to retire. We’re gonna need to figure out how to weather that storm. But the whole privatization movement, if successful, could only lead to two possible outcomes: the “profit free-for-all” that we now see in the health insurance arena, or just a horribly-botched and destroyed system.