Chaos At The Apple (AAPL) App Store As Nudity Programs Disappear

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By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated Published

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Software applications which allowed owners of Apple (AAPL) iPhones to download pornography have started to disappear from the firm’s huge App Store which now has more than 50,000 offerings.

According toThe Washington Post,  Apple’s rules do allow for program that include nudity, so it is not clear what happened to the lewd content. The porno firms say that  they had to cut access to the products because their servers could not take the demand.

Apple may be running into the same trouble that Microsoft (MSFT) did with its Bing search engine. The product made it easier for users to get to pornographic material. Apparently,  Microsoft set up programs to help block that access.

So, does Apple allow nudity and pornography to be downloaded to its iPhone or not? No one has a good answer to that question. It is certainly possible that public interest groups have been pressuring the company to cut off access to content that could be seen by children and people who object to pornography. Apple certainly does not want groups boycotting its stores or AT&T’s (T) and agitating to get consumers to stop visiting the Apple website to buy products. A sharp and negative reaction to apps that allow the download of nude videos and pictures could even  cause some consumers to turn away from purchasing Macs and iPods.

Pornography may simply have Apple running scared.

Douglas A. McIntyre

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About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.

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