Apple has decided that applications that are ‘overtly sexual’ no longer have a home in the App Store. Apple’s new App Store content policy has resulted in over 5,000 companies’ apps being purged. The companies whose apps were deemed ‘overtly sexual’ were notified last week that their applications were going to be removed due to their content. This doesn’t come as a huge surprise, because of iTouch, the App Store needs to cater to children as well as adults; it would seem to be graphic content and wouldn’t be good for business.
What’s strange about the recent purges, isn’t that they are removing sexual content, it’s who they are not removing. Playboy has an application that has not been removed from the App Store yet. Companies whose apps were removed are scratching their heads, wondering what makes Playboy special. Did Apple feel like Playboy is as “American as ‘Apple’ Pie”? It would seem so, or maybe they struck a deal, who knows. I do know that Playboy’s app is more graphic than any other apps I have seen, it appears that thousands of companies are being treated unfairly by Apple. Companies should have and ought to have the right to stay in business if Apple is going to allow Playboy’s app inside the App Store.
The new App Store policy, it will not accept applications that in any way imply sexual content or include the following:
- Images of women in bikinis
- Images of men in bikinis
- Images of skin
- Silhouettes indicating that the app includes sexual images
- Sexual connotations or innuendo
- Sexually arousing content