Friday, Feb 19, 2010    Text size: 

CUPERTINO, Calif. — Apple has decided to pull an app called Wobble iBoobs, which lets users jiggle women’s breasts, in an attempt to remove sexually explicit content from its App store.

Jon Atherton, the developer of the Wobble iBoobs App, told TechCrunch.com that he received an email from Apple saying that his application was being removed because of a new policy change.

The letter Atherton says he received from iPhone App review reads, “The App Store continues to evolve, and as such, we are constantly refining our guidelines. Your application, Wobble iBoobs (Premium Uncensored), contains content that we had originally believed to be suitable for distribution. However, we have recently received numerous complaints from our customers about this type of content, and have changed our guidelines appropriately. We have decided to remove any overtly sexual content from the App Store, which includes your application.”

Wobble iBoobs has been on the market for several months and downloaded about 1 million times.

Apple’s decision has caused an uproar among technology commentators and other adult mobile app developers who say Apple needs to provide more specific guidelines on what it considers to be suitable content for iPhone applications.

“We are obviously very disappointed with Apple’s sudden change in policy regarding adult related apps, especially given that there was no notice given to developers that a policy change was underway,” Mike Hawk, founder of GrindhouseMobile.com told XBIZ.

“Prior to the launch of our first app, GrindhouseMobile worked closely with Apple's compliance department and took great care in following Apple’s original guidelines to gain approval of our first few apps, so this sudden change in policy was shocking to say the least. To make matters worse, once we understood what we thought to be Apple’s guidelines (based on previous approvals) we spent substantial time, money and resources developing new apps using the same exact guidelines. Obviously, we are now facing a complete loss on our investment to date given Apple's latest policy change.”

One commentator told Sky News Online that there are other apps, like “Epic Boobs,” “College Boobs” and “Asian Boobs” still available for download.

In an email to Sky News Online, Apple responded by saying, “Whenever we receive customer complaints about objectionable content we review them. If we find these apps contain inappropriate material we remove them and request the developer make any necessary changes in order to be distributed by Apple.”