Provocatively titled apps pulled from App Store for not containing any girl parts

Provocatively titled apps pulled from App Store for not containing any girl parts

When two luridly titled apps called Tits & Boobies and Pussy Lovers appeared on the App Store, it wasn’t long before Apple told the developer to cover himself, for god’s sake. The apps were quickly pulled, even though (as you might have guessed) the apps were nothing besides a couple of suggestive puns slapped on top of slideshows of birds and cats.

Business as usual: puritanical Apple does not like even the scent of pudenda acridly wafting through the App Store. However, Apple’s stated reason for pulling the apps is rather unexpected: it appears that their main complaint about the apps was there just weren’t enough breasts and vaginas in them.

According to developer Samir, writing to Gizmodo, the real issue was that the app titles were misleading.

“I received a call from someone at Apple and he said that the apps were being removed from the store as they were deemed inappropriate for the iTunes Store. Although I did not ask him if they received complaints, upon inquiring about what it was that was inappropriate about the apps, I was told that the title did not match the content and was asked to change the title and the “Education” category. I asked him if I could change the content instead, as there were other similarly named apps on the store, and got back something that equated to a maybe (though he did specifically say that they weren’t asking me to put pictures of Vaginas in the Pussy Lovers app).”

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Good for a laugh, but of course, Apple’s right: while the apps were free, the misleading nature of both their titles and their app store descriptions is a pretty egregious transgression which could set a woeful precedent. An app’s listing should truthfully and unambiguously describe both the content and function of the program.

Otherwise? Anarchy! Does anyone really want to live in a world where ninety nine cents spent for the “Turgidly Dripping Cocks” app only nets you a photo slideshow of wet, rigor mortised roosters?

About the author

John BrownleeJohn Brownlee is news editor here at Cult of Mac, and has also written about a lot of things for a lot of different places, including Wired, Playboy, Boing Boing, Popular Mechanics, Gizmodo, Kotaku, Lifehacker, AMC, Geek and the Consumerist. He lives in Cambridge with his charming inamorata and a tiny budgerigar punningly christened after Nabokov's most famous pervert. You can follow him here on Twitter.

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Posted in iPhone Apps, News |

  • http://Www.att.com AT.T

    So ridiculous. Good call on Apple’s part. I don’t want to spend $.99 on an app that is completely different than what the description adverises.

  • Dustin

    I think this is a symptom of some developers trying to make their apps stand out on the store, and not get buried under thousands of similar apps. Or they are just dorks. :)

  • iGenius

    Hey John –

    I don’t think that anybody would like the scent of pudenda acridly wafting anywhere…

    …but you write very well.

  • Charli

    Apple has rules and follows them. One of the rules is misleading titles. If it had been a porn app posing as an education app it would have been pulled. so why not the other way.

  • iGenius

    “Apple has rules and follows them. One of the rules is misleading titles. If it had been a porn app posing as an education app it would have been pulled. so why not the other way.”

    Because “the other way” is foolish. A wiser man than I once said “a foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of small minds”.

    One must examine rules in order to apply them properly. To blindly follow them leads to situations like the iSore’s foolish banning of certain apps.

  • http://www.metrokids.ca Conrad

    Titling practices like those are the kind that Gizmodo (among other Microsoft-loving sites and ‘journalists’) uses against apple on a daily basis. No wonder the app’s creator turned there for support.

    *eyeroll*