The IT Nerd

Now let me be clear. I’m not a porn advocate. Yes I’ve watched porn, but I don’t say that everybody has to. Apparently Steve Jobs doesn’t agree as he seems to be at war with porn. Let me recap what’s happened to this point:

• This past February, Apple removed thousands of apps that were considered to be “overtly sexual.” These apps included ones that had jiggly boobs and other things that could be considered juvenile rather than sexual. But that’s a matter of perspective. Phil Schiller of Apple offered this reason to the New York Times: “It came to the point where we were getting customer complaints from women who found the content getting too degrading and objectionable, as well as parents who were upset with what their kids were able to see,”
• This past April, Steve Jobs answered a question from Ryan Block in a very strange way. The question was “Are there any plans to allow unsigned applications on the iPhone?” His answer? “You know, there’s a porn store for Android. You can download nothing but porn. You can download porn, your kids can download porn. That’s a place we don’t want to go – so we’re not going to go there.” Sorry, I might have missed a memo, but how does unsigned apps equal porn? I don’t get it.
• Finally there was a much publicized e-mail exchange between Steve Jobs and Apple customer Matthew Browing. The aforementioned Mr. Browning said: “It appears that more and more Apple is determining for it’s consumers what content they should be able to receive… I’m all for keeping porn out of kids hands. Heck – I’m all for ensuring that I don’t have to see it unless I want to. But… that’s what parental controls are for. Put these types of apps into categories and allow them to be blocked by their parents should they want to.” What did Mr. Jobs reply? “…we do believe we have a moral responsibility to keep porn off the iPhone. Folks who want porn can buy an Android phone.” Okay then.

Here’s the bottom line. When Apple first came out with the Macintosh, they launched it with the now famous 1984 advert which claimed that “1984 won’t be like 1984.” Here’s a news flash. Apple has strayed away from that. I’m not saying by any means that Apple should have a free for all when it comes for porn, but it’s all about two things in my mind. One it’s about freedom of choice. If I want to watch boobies on my iDevice, that’s my choice to do so and not Steve Jobs choice. Second as Matthew Browning pointed out, parental controls can deal with stuff that parents don’t want their kids to see. Is it perfect? No. But in an ideal world parents would catch whatever parental controls miss. After all, that’s what parents are there for.

So to answer my original question, I don’t have a clue why Apple hates porn. But I do know this. Apple better get a clue here. Otherwise all the Apple fanbois in the world won’t be able to stop Apple from being assigned the perception that Apple is a controlling, dictatorial, judgmental company.

Oh wait. They already have that perception.

Oh by the way Steve, I hate to point it out to you but sex blogger Violet Blue has already pointed out that you in fact get porno onto your shiny iDevices [Slightly NSFW] and there is NOTHING you can do about it.

This entry was posted on May 24, 2010 at 8:28 pm and is filed under Commentary with tags Apple, Porn. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.