Peek-a-Boo: Racy iPhone Apps OK’d By Apple Abound on iTunes
11:59 pm, July 10th, 2009, Nicole Martinelli
Hottie Show is one of dozens of 17+ apps available for the iPhone.
If Apple is to be believed, the iTunes App Store is a smut-free zone. App developers, however, are treading a fine bikini line between nudity and prudery, offering dozens of apps with racy, soft-core content, ranging from “Bikini Inspector” to “Peekababe,” where a nipple covered in wet gauze or a woman clothed only in hot-pink mesh is considered clothed enough by Apple standards.
When Steve Jobs introduced the App Store on June 9, 2008, porn was at the top of the list of content that would not be allowed in apps.
“There are going to be some apps that we’re not going to distribute,” Jobs said. “Porn, malicious apps, apps that invade your privacy.”
Apple has taken steps to enforce Jobs’s pledge. In late June, Apple shuttered the Hottest Girls app which featured 2,000+ pictures of naked girls. A week later, the company nuked another app, BeautyMeter, which showcased pictures uploaded by users, some of them clearly underage. “Apple will not distribute applications that contain inappropriate content, such as pornography,” reiterated Apple spokesman Tom Neumayr in late June after the company removed Hottest Girls.
So you might think iTunes offers nothing in the way of salacious eye candy.
Hardly. The iTunes store affords many ways to find a locked bathroom interesting for 10 minutes, in a range of tastes.
Click through the gallery below for some of the smutty apps we found in the App Store. If we missed some, please add them the comments.
Most of the apps are found in the “Lifestyle” and “Entertainment” sections. Some are tucked away in the “Photography” category. Some masquerade as games (Crazy Eights with the Hooters girls, anyone?) but the intent is clear.
Some, but not all, bear the 17+ rating for “frequent/intense mature/suggestive themes” and or “infrequent/mild sexual content or nudity.”
None, however, feature nudity. This is the line Apple will not cross. But the boundary is constantly being pushed by app sellers. Sometimes, it looks like developers may have replaced topless pics to avoid Apple censorship. More frequently however, users often complain in ratings about peek-a-boo nudity — apps that promised topless but didn’t deliver.
And surprisingly, given Apple’s stance, there are a couple of apps very similar to BeautyMeter, which allows users to upload their own pictures, making it very difficult to police for “inappropriate content.” Pretty Map, for example, is another social networking app with “beautiful girls” to view and rate. But although we downloaded Pretty Map expecting to get some smut, the buggy app didn’t come through.
Amateur Bikini
The Amateur Bikini app is billed by publisher McApps as “the closest you can get to porn on the iTunes store.” If so, the picture above is the closest thing you can get to porn. The developer says the app is aimed at fans of bikinis and lingerie who like to see hot babes “dressed in bikinis.” $0.99.
Posted by Nicole Martinelli in News, Top stories, iPhone, iPod Touch, iTunes | Comment on this article
Why would you want to pay for racy apps when you could convert your own personal video collection for the iphone for free.
Poppa, on July 11th, 2009 at 3:46 am
Suicide Girls app does the biro ink removal thing from the 70’s.
GingerNinja, on July 11th, 2009 at 7:52 am
Tell me again about how Apple is so far ahead of it’s competition with 50,000 apps and most of them are rubbish like this.
Peter, on July 12th, 2009 at 12:21 am
Apple banned the Nine Inch Nails app for lyrics that contained profanity (however those very songs are able to be purchased on the iTunes store),yet they allow this kind of thing? Just a tad hypocritical there, Apple.
Kat, on July 13th, 2009 at 12:55 pm
This is such a non-issue: mobile Safari doesn’t block content, find yourself a good ol’ non-flash porn site and stream/download ’til you hit your bandwidth limit.
msg23, on July 13th, 2009 at 6:54 pm
Geez, geeks, show some initiative! Why would you install this stuff as a paid application when you can find whatever mild, medium, or disgusting content you want, free, on your built in browser? Porn is the ultimate renewable internet resource.
Corta Moosehead, on July 14th, 2009 at 9:09 am
[...] our story on peek-a-boo apps that despite sexy content were OK’d by Apple despite the smut-free ban, a reader wrote in to say [...]
Sexy Dice Game Apps Nudge Past Censors on iTunes | Cult of Mac, on July 16th, 2009 at 9:04 am
How can “GOOD IN BED” be a app thats approved…. Its also kinda sexual even though there are no bikini models…. If apps like iSutra gets rejected these apps sud also not be allowed in store….
http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewSoftware?id=313821394&mt=8
Jason David, on July 30th, 2009 at 6:43 am
There’s a new app called “Peekaboo” in the App Store that features 3D models of nearly naked women.
jane, on August 7th, 2009 at 11:45 pm
As a developer I find Apple’s stance very frustrating. We have had a celebrity bikini based app in review for over a month now, after it was first rejected for being too sexual due to an image of Abi Titmus naked – yet posing in a way so nothing “naughty” was visible. Other apps out there are fair more sexually explicit, our images are fairly tame, yet Apple seem to have dropped us into the bottomless pit or “App under review”.
They did send us an email saying that it was taking longer than normal to review, but 3 weeks later and we have still heard nothing..
If they let bikini girls based apps in, then they should let them all in, either that or none at all. They system at the minute seems very unfair and confusing.
Darren Lynch, on August 25th, 2009 at 8:57 am
[...] lot of articles (like Cult of Mac, Wired.com …)have been written about the problem of the age rating within the app store. Most [...]
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