First Apple decided that an iPhone game which featured Barack Obama bouncing on a trampoline and Bill Clinton without trousers was in such bad taste that it had no place in the App Store and so refused to feature it. Then came the equally mad news that an application to put South Park wallpaper and perfectly legal video clips from the series on the iPhone was also far from being what it deems acceptable content for the App Store and banned that as well. At the time the developers of this particular app were quoted as saying that Apple thought the content could be potentially offensive.
Really? I wonder why Apple did not think that an iPhone game that was deemed acceptable and did appear for sale in the App Store was not potentially offensive when it revolves around the sick objective of getting a baby to stop crying by shaking it until it dies. Before it was removed, the App Store description of this sick 'game' said "On a plane, on the bus, in a theatre. Babies are everywhere you don't want them to be! They're always distracting you from preparing for that big presentation at work with their incessant crying. Before Baby Shaker there was nothing you could do about it."
OK, the application was removed within two days but surely that is two days too many for something that was obviously going to cause offence and, indeed, pain to those who have lost children through such abuse. An Apple statement to the BBC on the matter simply reads: "This application was deeply offensive and should not have been approved for distribution on the App Store. We sincerely apologise for this mistake and thank our customers for bringing this to our attention."
