Apple Releases New Sexy App Guidelines for Developers

After the release, and subsequent takedown of the first iPhone App to display naked boobs, “Hottest Girls,” Apple has put out a new set of guidelines to help developers steer clear of a similar fate.

Apple iPhone App “Sexy” Guidelines:

1) Apps containing nothing but pictures of women over the age of 18 will be permitted in the App Store as long as said women are not exposing any of their “bathsuit suit” parts.

2) Apps may allow users to undress said women as long as they only take off a single layer of clothing.  Removal of more than one layer of clothing will get you banned.

3) All said women must wear underwear that covers the entire pubic region (don’t make me say the v-word) and at least one-third of the tuchus while exposing none of the separation between cheeks.  On top, said women may expose as much boob as they can without showing the world even a glimpse of areola or nipple.  Therefore, the smaller said woman’s areola, the more breast can be exposed.  Now, nipples. They can poke through the thinnest, wettest fabric you’ve got, but the user may NOT see the actual nipple skin.

4) Apps may allow users to manipulate the breasts of said women via the touch-screen as long as they user is not able to see the actual flesh being manipulated.

5) Similar Apps featuring scantily clad men will be banned due to the fact that they may cause homosexuality, thus violating the App Store’s basic TOS.

Apple hopes this clears things up in the “sexy” App department.  Look forward to more guidelines from Apple including “Words and Phrases to Avoid in eBooks” and “What’s Ok to Gun Down.”

Live Baseball on Your iPhone

Taking one more small, but important, step towards offering customers what they want where they want it, the MLB is rolling out a new iPhone app that takes advantages in the 3.0 software update.  The new app will allow users to watch live streaming coverage of out-of-market baseball games right on their iPhone over either a 3G or WiFi connection.

This is certainly cool.  The one thing I miss since cutting my cable TV is coverage of the occasional live sporting event.  Slowly but surely, the major sports leagues are coming up with ways for viewers to enjoy events without commiting to expensive packages of programming, the majority of which you are not interested in seeing.

We are getting closer to the day when you can simply pick an event, pay a fair price, and enjoy the coverage on the screen of your choice.  What this will mean to the licensing deals that have been the life-blood of cable operators for years, is still to be determined.  One thing is certain, as distribution becomes less and less reliant on the cable companies, the cable companies are going to find themselves quickly dislodged from their current position as an unwelcome monopoly.

The MLB app will cost you $10, and as long as you don’t follow the local team, seems like a pretty good deal.

Apple Loves Soft Core Porn Apps Like SuicideGirls Flip Strip

The ongoing saga of Apple’s idiotic idea to police iPhone apps continues to do nothing but confuse and annoy both users and developers.

While developers hoping to add real usefulness to the iPhone with new eBook readers find themselves being rejected because it might let someone download the public domain version of the Kama Sutra, makers of what amounts to soft-core porn seem to have no problems getting approval.

For instance, the Sucide Girls Flip Strip application.  Here is what it does.  It presents a still photo of a young woman in clothes. When you flip the phone over it reveals the same girl in just her underwear.

While there is not explicit nudity there is nothing beyond prurient value here.

Now, I’m not saying Apple should ban apps like this. Instead, I think Apple should stop trying to play morals cop and let the grown up owners of the iPhone decide whether or not they want to buy any app that can be developed.

iPhone Apps Beat Pirates By Understanding Users

Image via Wikipedia

There was a piece in the New York Times about the somewhat surprising success of iPhone Apps, especially the success of the apps that aren’t free:

What’s most interesting is how iPhone users are willing to spend money in ways that Web users are not.

I’ve criticized Apple from time to time for not having a coherent approach to delivering free content with advertising. But in some ways, the development of a market for paid content is a bigger and less expected achievement.

Why has this happened? Apple has created an environment that makes buying digital goods easy and common. With an infrastructure that supports one-click purchases of songs and videos, it was easy to add applications in the same paradigm. Paying for software, especially games, is not new to Apple customers. So when you see the iPhone manual or the Frommer’s Paris guidebook, it feels natural to click. (And of course, your credit card is already on file with Apple.)

What I think is most important in this story is that is proves that most people are more than willing to pay a reasonable price for a decent piece of content if a) it is extremely easy and streamlined to make the purchase and b) the content is priced in a way that seems to fit the value.

It certainly wouldn’t be hard for their the be a vast P2P network for iPhone apps much like there is for music right now – and there is when it comes to “jail-broken” iPhones – but it seems that the vast majority of users are more than happy to pay for the apps they want since Apple has made it simple and affordable.

Hey record labels and studios, you guys paying attention?

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The Presidents of the United States Push iPhone Music App

There is a very cool story in Wired about a new iPhone app from the band The Presidents of the United States.  Selling for $3, the app provides buyers with a direct streaming link (meaning you must be “online” to use it) to four albums and a slew of other content:

“If all the rights to the masters and the publishing are contained — if the artist has control of them or the label has control of them,” said Dederer, “they can sell music in this entirely new format. The first one we’re doing is for my band, The Presidents… you can sort of pump anything in there that you want, at random. Maybe we’ll put my bandmate Chris Ballow’s answering machine message on there… it becomes an open conduit to the fans to promote tours… and include links to the band’s blog.”

All of the music in the Presidents’ iPhone app is available in streamable playlist form, so you need to be connected via cell or Wi-Fi in order to hear it. Songs can be played in order or shuffled, while “Buy” links let you add any of the songs to your normal iTunes collection so that they can play offline. As for Apple, it’s happy to collect 30 percent of the price of the app for distributing it — the same share it takes when songs are sold through the more conventional iTunes music store.

This is a great experiment in terms of non-traditional distribution.  I wonder if the $3 pricetag is such a good idea, though.  It would seem to me the true benefit with this sort of app is user-penetration since it becomes a constant opportunity to make more money on tours, single-song sales and merchandising.  $3 seems like a high price to pay when you don’t actually get anything but access.