Apple’s family values

This morning Ryan Block asked Steve Jobs whether Apple will enable unsigned applications, like Android and Palm OS. Jobs replied, “There’s a porn store for Android… you can download it, your kids can download it. That’s a place we don’t want to go, so we’re not going to.”

Notice that Ryan wasn’t asking about porn?

It’s an uncomfortable answer, whenever someone blurts out something about porn, or hardcore sex, and you’re only asking them about… well, anything not sex-related. In a roomful of people. But it was a very revealing answer, and a very disappointing one. Not that I feel entitled to see adult content on my favorite devices. No, it’s not a right. But because that answer presented such an unsophisticated stereotype as a foil. It’s a cheap way of tarring Android with the porn brush — as if that’s a stigma everyone believes in.

Suggesting children get exposed to porn through Android is a cheap shot. That sounds like something that the hysterical end of Fox News would say to go after someone. What really disappoints me about what Jobs said, is that he’s using sex as a salvo. I mean, if you want to say “Apple will never enable unsigned applications because it’s only cost effective for us to enable apps we make money off of” that would be fine. Lame and silly, but fine. It’s their playground. And never mind the indie developers, who seem to be getting the shaft with all of this. But to cite a business decision on the basis of moral judgement… it’s not what leaders are made of. It’s what followers do.

If you walk into any WalMart across America this month, pick up a copy of MacLife and read my story about Apple and so-called adult applications. In Of Apps and Men. The piece went up and I love it — though it was spec’d for print and a few sections had to be cut out. One cut was what I felt was the most scandalous bit of all. First, here’s the intro from the final feature:

The only thing missing from Apple’s naughty-app saga is–ironically enough–actual sex. There’s enough drama, duplicity, conflict, girls in bikinis, jilted developers, titillated geeks, and destroyed businesses to make a great feature film. Although it’d be rated PG-13, rather than X or even just R.

The iPhone is a sexy gadget, but Apple wants to make sure it’s not that kind of sexy. Much ado has been made over its zealous monitoring of the App Store’s so-called vulgar content and its uneven enforcement of content standards. And when Apple selectively purged over 5,000 naughty apps from the App Store in February, the conversation grew louder. But what are we really talking about? (…)

(…) Meanwhile, oodles of actual porn companies were making their websites iPhone-compatible, erotic photographers and porn stars were shilling nude and explicit iPhone wallpaper, and all of it was being hyped as “iPhone porn” without ever coming near the App Store. Euro-porn emporium Wild Dolls created a movie interface formatted perfectly for the iPhone, and there are tons of other iPhone-optimized sites available that any teenager with Mobile Safari can find in an instant. But many believed that you could actually find pornography in the App Store. Which you never could. Just so we’re clear. (…read more, maclife.com)

And here’s the part I think you’ll find most interesting, which no one’s seen outside the editing room until now:

Among those who drank the iPhone porn panic Kool-Aid include Christian watchdog organization Parents Television Council. On February 19, following a mass-email announcement, the group that mobilized 530,828 complaints (mostly via their email list) to the FCC complaining about Janet Jackson’s Super Bowl wardrobe malfunction announced their campaign, “Help PTC Stop Apple from Providing Porn on its iPhone“.

A key element in the Stop Apple campaign, besides PTC’s mailing list, is the “Stop Apple Providing Porn to Kids” page. It opens with the unsubstantiated claim that “Apple is allowing the sale of pornographic applications for the iPhone in its iTunes store, with the content then being downloaded onto the iPhone. … Please help us hold Apple responsible for providing pornography to children.” This leads visitors to a February 17 article on Silicon Alley Insider listing fifteen naughty apps — and a link to Apple’s iPhone feedback form, with instructions on filling it out. Similar to their hand-holding FCC complaint form page, it in no way requires that people who file complaints also be actual iPhone users.

While PTC is taking credit on their website for a successful campaign, it remains to be seen what led to the drama that unfolded next. PTC’s email blast and follow-up announcement was when Apple began what news media and tech blogs colloquially call “the purge”. On Friday the 19th, selected developers received an email from iPhone App Review telling them that their previously-approved applications, “(…) 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.”

I thought the PTC was an important piece of the puzzle. My MacLife piece then points out,

The following Monday, Apple was roused from slumber to issue their statements exclusively to the New York Times. In pages of The Grey Lady, Apple head of worldwide product marketing Philip W. Schiller pointed fingers at “a small number of developers” who he claimed had been submitting “an increasing number of apps containing very objectionable content.” Perhaps unwittingly, he next paved the way for PTC’s self-congratulation saying, “It came to the point where we were getting customer complaints from women who found the content getting too degrading and objectionable, as well as parents who were upset with what their kids were able to see.”

As a blogger and an Apple fan, I was personally pissed off that Apple spoke to the NYT, while ignoring the high-profile tech blogs that had been trying to reach Apple for days — blogs that broke, and then carried the story. Apple is a brand made by loyalty: most especially the blogs.

I don’t know exactly what’s going on here. But I do know that demonizing sex and pornography is a dangerous game, and people who do that had better know what they are talking about. Especially in an enlightened marketplace.

Disclaimer: I’m friends with Ryan Block‘s GF, and I currently have friends that work at Apple (and many who have in the past).