App Store Director Has Side Job Making Fart Apps

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It just farts. According to Wired, Phillip Shoemaker — the director of applications technology at Apple, and the honcho responsible for maintaining a puritanical standard of quality in the App Store library — has a side job: selling a series of flatulence, evacuation and micturating simulators on the App Store through his company, Gray Noodle.

One such app is called iWiz. “Simulate the experience of urinating for a long time,” the app description reads. “Convince your friends that you’ll never stop.”

Even the rare Gray Noodle app not obsessed with fart sounds and potty humor are hysterically inane, though. For example, the App Store description for Grey Noodle’s Blue Flame describes the program’s functionality this way:

A simple candle or lighter flame application. Use it at a concert to convince the band to do that Freebird cover. Offer to light a girl’s cigarette, NOT.

Ah. “Not.” Lez Motts Juice, as Wayne Campbell and Garth Algar might have congratulated one another.

On Cupertino’s part, Apple is defending Shoemaker, saying that he was hired partly because of his background as a developer.

“Phillip’s apps were written, submitted and approved before he became an Apple employee,” an Apple spokeswoman said in a statement. “His experience and perspective as a developer is one of the valuable things he brings to Apple’s developer relations team. Apple’s policy allows for employees to have apps on the App Store if they’re developed and published prior to their start at Apple.”

Shoemaker does not appear to be reacting as calmly, though: upon the publication of Wired’s article, he immediately deleted his Twitter account and removed any references to Gray Noodle from his LinkedIn profile.

Not that Shoemaker’s really done anything wrong: Apple has no policy against farting applications on the App Store. Then again, when the man in charge of making those policies is making money off of those kinds of applications, is it any wonder?

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