Monday, Nov 24, 2008    Text size: 

Apple Inc. may have been purposely trying to test the market for such content, Harvey Kaplan, executive vice president of wireless development at BustBox Media Inc., told XBIZ.

“Somebody who was in the approval department thought the content was passable,” Kaplan said. “This looks like a corporate decision. Someone blew the whistle on this and that is why it got pulled down.”

A write-up posted on website ReadWriteWeb.com makes an argument that Apple’s review process may be flawed. The approval and then quick removal of Wallpaper Universe exposes a “giant gaping hole” in Apple's review process.

The article raises the question of whether Apple “intends to keep users safe from illegal and malicious applications, those that are bandwidth hogs, and those that raise privacy concerns.”

Above all, however, Apple apparently is hesitant about adult content on its sought-after smartphone.

“Apple won’t reveal what goes on behind the scenes with their approval process, a process that often takes weeks or months,” according to the article. “But this incident almost makes you wonder if there is one blurry-eyed guy sitting at a keyboard, clicking ‘approve, approve, reject’ all day as hundreds of applications arrive for approval.”