Apple purges thousands of sexy apps from App Store

Apple getting precious over its 'adult' app
Apple getting precious over its 'adult' app

UPDATE: As of 24 February, Simply Beach has also returned to the App Store. The developer confirmed to TechRadar that neither he nor his client received any communication from Apple during or about this incident. iWobble remains absent from the App Store at the time of writing.

Apple has pulled thousands of apps from its App Store after it says it received complaints about perceived adult content.

This means anything that features women (and we assume men too) in provocative swimwear and lingerie has mostly been pulled.

Philip Schiller, senior VP of worldwide product marketing, said told the NY Times that the App Store approvals team has seen "an increasing number of apps containing very objectionable content."

"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," he added.

Lost revenue

This move has meant that developers who previously had been making thousands of pounds a month from the App Store were now down to nearly no revenue after the change.

One of the apps removed was Wobble iBoobs, where a user could take a picture of anything, mark the relevant points on the picture and watch it jiggle.

Admittedly, the name clearly states that women's breasts were the intended target, but it did not come pre-loaded with any content and did not mandate what could be 'wobbled'.

Apple may invoke the ire of the developer community by moving the goalposts at this stage, despite it protesting that it's safeguarding minors by this action.

Gareth Beavis
Formerly Global Editor in Chief

Gareth has been part of the consumer technology world in a career spanning three decades. He started life as a staff writer on the fledgling TechRadar, and has grown with the site (primarily as phones, tablets and wearables editor) until becoming Global Editor in Chief in 2018. Gareth has written over 4,000 articles for TechRadar, has contributed expert insight to a number of other publications, chaired panels on zeitgeist technologies, presented at the Gadget Show Live as well as representing the brand on TV and radio for multiple channels including Sky, BBC, ITV and Al-Jazeera. Passionate about fitness, he can bore anyone rigid about stress management, sleep tracking, heart rate variance as well as bemoaning something about the latest iPhone, Galaxy or OLED TV.