Confusion surrounds first iPhone adult app

Apple's first adult iPhone application has been removed from its App Store after a blaze of publicity surrounding its launch.

Friday, 26 June 2009

ABC News quotes Apple spokesman Tom Neumayr as saying that the application - Hottest Girls - is "a direct violation of the terms of the iPhone Developer Program" and as such "the application is no longer available on the App Store."

Website Techcrunch reports that Allen Leung, developer of Hottest Girls, posted a comment on his web site stating that his app is “temporarily sold out” due to overload on his image server.

The news that Apple was launching Hottest Girls was met with surprise yesterday. The app featured nudity and other adult content and had previously featured tamer pictures.

Apple has taken a hardline approach to explicit content for iPhone apps in the past, erring on the side of caution by disallowing such apps as part of its approval process - including an ebook reader that had offered access to an electronic version of the Kama Sutra.

It was widely speculated that Apple had changed its policy as a result of the new parental controls which are a feature of the newly launched iPhone 3GS.

The iPhone 3GS was announced earlier this month and was made available to consumers on June 19th. Its new parental controls, included in the latest version of the phone's operating system, also apply to movies and TV shows viewed on the handset.

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