The Two Most Controversial iPhone Apps of the Week
Here are two things you could do with your iPhone last week that you might not be able to next week: learn about how to fake-"cure" yourself from being gay, and avoid DUI checkpoints. It's outrage time in the App store!
Yesterday Apple pulled Exodus International's "gay cure" app from the App Store after 140,000 people signed a petition demanding its removal. The app was a "giant resource bank" of material "curated to reflect the mission of Exodus International, which states that individuals can 'grow into heterosexuality,'" according to The Atlantic. So, it was sort of the homophobic Angry Birds. People were leaping up random on the subway during rush hour shouting "I beat level 12! I'm cured! I'm cured!"
Apple pulled the app not because it is complete bullshit, but because "it violates our developer guidelines by being offensive to large groups of people," according to a statement.
A similar fate may be in store for a handful of apps that help people avoid DUI checkpoints. Four Democratic Senators sent Apple, Google and RIM expressing concern about these apps for their respective smartphones. One of these, Checkpointer, is available for $4.99 in the App store. It looks for DUI checkpoints in Orange County and publishes GPS coordinates. So you can drive while drunk and on your iPhone at the same time.
People will try to make various claims about Apple based on its response to these two controversies. For example, that Steve Jobs hates Christians, or loves drunk driving. But App store censorship doesn't reflect Jobs' feelings about any one issue. It's all just part of Apple's never-ending quest to make the App Store as bland and noncontroversial as humanly possible.
[Image via Getty]