Not long after news about Hottest Girls, the first porn application for the iPhone broke out, it was summarily removed from the App Store. Everyone had their own guess about what the dismissal was about, although the developer claimed that the app was pulled to mitigate server overload. It did not take long for Apple to issue an official statement though, confirming that the app was indeed rejected for its pornographic content.
According to the Apple spokesman, the company "will not distribute applications that contain inappropriate content, such as pornography." The erstwhile groundbreaking application apparently got approved without the "objectionable" material, as it pulls down the content directly from its server. Most likely, it showed "sexy" photos during the approval process but had switched over to the more provoking material once it went live.
While the incident made it clear that the App Store remained keen on disallowing the distribution of adult material, it also highlights a potential vulnerability in the iPhone: the fact that developers have the latitude to insert any sort of content into their software after the users download it. Porn and other adult materials are probably the least of their problems on this end, with the same vulnerability making it possible to insert malicious code (although security experts have concluded in the past that the iPhone’s API is largely secure from data theft).
I guess the iPhone won't be our favorite mobile platform for naughtiness after all, boys. For now, we'll just have to wait for one of the other platforms to take its place. How about opening the Android Market for that, Google?
Photo Credit: PocketPicks
