CUPERTINO, CA — Apple Inc. may be inching toward more leniency regarding the applications it allows in its online applications store, but the company isn’t ready to pull out all the stops just yet.At the end of December, Apple’s App Store rejected a titillating application designed for the iPhone and iPod Touch. Designed by Mystic Game Development as a demonstration of the company’s character animation middleware, the app takes advantage of the iPhone’s and iPod Touch’s vibration sensor system to allow users to jiggle a pair of bra-clad breasts on their screens. Bounce to the ounce on-screen is directly proportional to the amount of energy a user expends shaking his device. (A demo video is here: http://tinyurl.com/93c2oe. It’s probably NSFW, unless you work in porn.)
Although Apple rejected the app as “objectionable content,” it didn’t rule out the possibility something similar might be accepted.
“If you believe that you can make the necessary changes so that iBoobs does not violate the iPhone SDK Agreement, we encourage you to do so,” the rejection notice read, although it’s difficult to imagine how the app could be changed without destroying the reason it exists.
The App Store has become an enormous success for Apple and the myriad developers who offer tiny software snippets within it. Reports indicate the most popular, most unusual (synonymous with “just plain strange” in this case) applications enjoy hundreds of thousands of purchases within days of their launch. Most apps are priced from 99 cents to $1.99, and many — especially in the “Entertainment” category — are thoroughly useless no matter how high a curiosity factor they embody.
One has to wonder, though: With the growing number of violent and bodily function apps available at the App Store — like the iFart Mobile, which does exactly what its name implies — will Apple continue to reject softcore content for mature audiences?
