Baby Shakergate: Apple officially sorry

Ah well

there goes my idea for a game where a giant bouncing breast goes around beating up babies whilst web-surfing over your O2 connection.

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Just a guess but I think Apple uses Google Adwords engine to vet the apps instead of using a real human. Then they could have a magic 8 ball calling the shots.

censorship...

there is a point where you go to far. i think killing babies may well be it. the whole point of this app was to see how long you can stand the baby crying before you kill it....

it is apple selling these apps after all, so a bit of corporate responsibility is required.

as for the wobbely apps, they didn't really cross any line but the silly one.

@Al Iguana

The problem is that "offensive" is inherently a subjective assessment. Name anything, anything at all: someone will manage to find it offensive and someone will find it perfectly acceptable. Using "offensive" as a standard basically means no standard at all. At best, you can achieve a sort of mob rule by taking votes, that's it.

Now, "contains violence" or "contains nudity" are actually objectively assessable. Even "promotes intolerance of any particular group" isn't totally unworkable. But as it is, you're just doing the same thing here: setting yourself up as an arbitrary decider of what is and isn't acceptable based on your own personal ideas of propriety. That's the problem.

Mind you, that's pretty much what Apple is about, as I understand it. But I think that's the point: Apple's decisions what to allow onto its boat are completely whimsical and capricious. Which is fine to me, but it makes life difficult for anyone who wants to be able to predict what will or won't be permitted.

@ Al Iguana

How about a "Shoot your classmates like it's columbine??"

I thing you'll find thathalf the videogames ever made are actually variations on that theme.

Idiotic comment

Type your comment here — plain text only, no HTML"but Apple has now appointed itself arbitrator of what is just in poor taste and what is actually "deeply offensive". We look forward to the Internet Watch Foundation referring to Cupertino when faced with difficult decisions about such things."

Dumb, stupid remark. Apple vet what applications run on the iPhone so they can hardly allow themselves to be associated with what many would regard as deeply offensive. As they approve these things it is fundamentally associated with their brand. Should somebody write something like this for a more open programming platform (like the MAC) then Apple wouldn't have been in this position. Also, you can put whatever offensive-to-some video that you like into an iPod, although don't expect Apple to stock it.

Of course you can raise the issue over whether the iPhone should be a completely open platform so anybody could download whatever offensive material you like. But when you get something through a company outlet then don't expect them to be uninterested in the association with their brand.

I should add I hold no brief for Apple, but nobody with a few brain cells to rub together can blame them for this. Clearly the author of this particular article has styled himself after the unreconstructed 1970s student rag mag humour which I recall usually had a page of dead baby jokes. Students - really pushing the boundary of humour then...

App le

What is "offensive" is necessarily determined by what people complain about. That's what offensiveness is all about.

The question is whether something has enough merit to defend it from those who would censor it. A game which involves shaking a baby into silence only has merit for people who think it's funny to pretend to kill babies, so it's pretty easy to chuck that one in the bin. Jiggling breasts is purile and sexist, but in the context of a society where porn and it's cultural spin-offs are so widespread I wouldn't put banning it as a top priority. However, it's no great loss either as it's total merit is almost zero.

If Apple started banning apps that allowed you to paint your own nudes, or which encouraged people to be critical of the government... well, then I'd start worrying.

The lesson?

The lesson here is simple. Never write code for an apple machine.

What other measure would there be?

Surely how much negative publicity something generates is a pretty good measure of how offensive society considers the subject. It's been tried and tested by politicians for the last few hundred years...

Clearly Apple is still feeling their way here, but, as many others have pointed out many times here: it's their show. All this "Apple appoints self moral arbiter" stuff is pretty tired now.

Where's the "whatever" icon?

re: Censorship

'there is a point where you go to far. i think killing babies may well be it.'

Yeah, I think you might just be right about that. Just one thing though, I dont think any actual babies get killed. Its not real.

Real babies getting killed = very bad

Pretend babies getting killed = really couldn't care less

Irony-impairment

Reg writes whiny article about Apple controlling content on web site that it owns. Upon submission of this comment, I will receive a message that my comment will appear after being approved by self-same Reg.

A pretty safe call tbh

I don't think it's really necessary to consult the IWF to discover that an app where you shake a baby to death is in bad taste. Instead of being criticized over this decision, perhaps they should be applauded for cutting out the middlemen / red tape.