Easter eggs — secret options and goodies that programmers conceal inside their own programs — go back about as far as computers go, including the old Atari 2600, which saw the first video-game Easter egg on an old cartridge called "Adventure."
In the case of "Adventure," the game's beleaguered developer hid his name inside a secret room, but in the case of the iPhone, developers are using Easter eggs to smuggle porn and profanity into their iPhone apps.
For the uninitiated, the iPhone lets users download and install small applications, including web browsers, calculators and video games, among many others, but since the device's launch, Apple chieftain Steve Jobs has roundly rejected the idea of adult apps.
That hasn't stopped developers from exploring the boundaries of adult, but if a programmer wants to deliver outright XXX to the iPhone, they've had to build apps for the device's black market.
But Wired's Brian X. Chen pointed out that because Apple doesn't closely examine an app's source code, developers can easily sneak whatever they want through Apple's front gates.
For example, developer Jelle Prins built an app that displays lyrics from a user's song library, but because the app would, by definition, display the cuss words from certain songs, Apple rejected the app. Prins rebuilt the app with a bad-words filter, and Apple accepted it.
Unbeknownst to Apple, however, Prins hid an Easter egg in his app that lets users reveal the profane lyrics in their songs. The app is called Lyrics, and the directions for unlocking the Easter egg are listed on Wired.com.
Tech pundits have been criticizing the Apple App Store's rejection policy as inconsistent almost since it launched, but there's a darker side to this, too. Author Jonathan Zdziarski wrote a book called "iPhone Forensics: Recovering Evidence, Personal Data, and Corporate Assets," and he noted that although it would be difficult to build a Trojan horse using the iPhone's development platform, unsavory programmers could exploit the device's photo camera, audio recording mike or contacts list for their own nefarious ends.
“It’s not impossible to write code that looks innocent and acts innocent until you throw some kind of switch,” Zdziarski said. “It’s not hard to get that sort of thing past Apple…. It’s the equivalent of a doctor using a magnifying glass to try and find germs.”