We Mourn The Loss of Wobble iBoobs
The recent removal of a popular Apple iPhone application, “Wobble iBoobs”, has the tech community up in arms.
“Wobble iBoobs” was an iPhone app written to let users jiggle the boobs of static female model photos. Apple, who had originally marked the app as compliant with all standards, suddenly removed the application from it’s store. Shortly preceding it’s removal, an e-mail was sent to the owners stating Apple’s reasoning.
“The App Store continues to evolve, and as such, we are constantly refining our guidelines. Your application, Wobble iBoobs (Premium Uncensored), contains content that we had originally believed to be suitable for distribution. However, we have recently received numerous complaints from our customers about this type of content, and have changed our guidelines appropriately. We have decided to remove any overtly sexual content from the App Store, which includes your application.”
The application has been available for months on Apple’s App store and downloaded about 1 million times.
“We are obviously very disappointed with Apple’s sudden change in policy regarding adult related apps, especially given that there was no notice given to developers that a policy change was underway,” Mike Hawk, founder of GrindhouseMobile.com told XBIZ.
“Prior to the launch of our first app, GrindhouseMobile worked closely with Apple’s compliance department and took great care in following Apple’s original guidelines to gain approval of our first few apps, so this sudden change in policy was shocking to say the least. To make matters worse, once we understood what we thought to be Apple’s guidelines (based on previous approvals) we spent substantial time, money and resources developing new apps using the same exact guidelines. Obviously, we are now facing a complete loss on our investment to date given Apple’s latest policy change.”
Apple had better get a handle on what it does or does not want written for it’s hardware, otherwise their main source of iPhone revenue, applications, may be in trouble.
