Steve Jobs: Like Porn? Buy An Android Phone!

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Want porn on the go? Go buy an Android phone is the advice of none other than Apple founder Steve Jobs.

Writing to Jobs about Apple’s sometimes draconian content policing policies that most recently kept Pulitzer Prize winning caricaturist Mark Fiore from the App Store, Matthrew Browning wrote the following letter to Jobs:

I was converted to Apple products with the announcement of the iPhone 3G. (My friends have been trying to convince me for years.) Since then I’ve purchased 4 iPhones, 2 computers, several routers, and miscellaneous other items. Unfortunately, I’m really starting to have a philosophical issue with your company. It appears that more and more Apple is determining for it’s consumers what content they should be able to receive. For instance, the blocking of Mark Fiore’s comic app (due to being political satire) or blocking of what Apple considers to be porn.

I’m all for keeping porn out of kids hands. Heck – I’m all for ensuring that I don’t have to see it unless I want to. But… that’s what parental controls are for. Put these types of apps into categories and allow them to be blocked by their parents should they want to.

Apple’s role isn’t moral police – Apple’s role is to design and produce really cool gadgets that do what the consumer wants them to do.

Jobs’ response:

Fiore’s app will be in the store shortly. That was a mistake. However, we do believe we have a moral responsibility to keep porn off the iPhone. Folks who want porn can buy and Android phone.

To a lot of people, that actually sounds like a pretty strong endorsement of Android as a platform coming from Steve Jobs! Perhaps a better response would have been, “We feel it would be a liability to open up the App Store to porn… but it’s not like you’re totally out of luck on the porn front: just don’t expect it on the App Store. Personally, I’m a big fan of PornHub.com’s excellent iPhone site, which you can view in Mobile Safari. Check it out!”

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