No Playboy App For iPad, After All 140
tsamsoniw writes "The rumors that a Playboy app would appear in the Apple App Store were greatly exaggerated. Playboy plans to offer an online service through which subscribers can access past and current issues of the nudie mag — and per Playboy, it will be accessible via Safari and support iPad features (whatever that means). But if Playboy does come out with a native app for iPad, all the nudity will be censored. That should be just fine for the legions of people who indeed read the magazine for the articles. This really shouldn't be a surprise, though: If Apple insists on 'protecting' users of its high-priced gear from pixelated naughty bits in a graphic-novel version of classic literature, it certainly won't let users access the full monty. It's a shame, though: If Apple's customers want access to that sort of content, Apple should allow them to get at it via a native app instead of suffering a potentially buggier, less secure browser-based experience."
Buggy Browsers? (Score:5, Insightful)
Indeed (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:You mean even Hef (Score:5, Insightful)
And remember, you paid extra for the blocking of any nudity in apps! Well, other than the web browser of course. But aside from all the porn in the world, you're getting the porn blocking you paid for!
its just good marketing (Score:5, Insightful)
it makes parents feel comfortable buying their kids iPads and iPhones
now you don't have to like this marketing ploy, and you don't have to like the rationale behind the parent's thinking. but you have to admit it works, it brings in the $, and that's all that matters
It's Playboy, not Hustler... (Score:5, Insightful)
Just to be clear (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:You mean even Hef (Score:3, Insightful)
What's "porn"? What makes Playboy pornographic but not Eyes Wide Shut?
Until Apple answers this question, no publisher of anything beyond nursery rhymes can safely do business with them.
Re:You mean even Hef (Score:5, Insightful)
"Safe" meaning your company can afford to spend months or even years developing a title for publication, with confidence that it will not be arbitrarily rejected by Apple for reasons which are inconsistent with policies under which other applications and media have previously been approved.
Re:its just good marketing (Score:5, Insightful)
i didn't say it was good TECHNOLOGY, i said it was good MARKETING. there's a difference between perception and reality, and that difference can result in people buying your product over another one, even though, technologically, the reasons for why you justify your choice simply don't exist. "i bought the iPad because its safer for my kids." yeah, bullshit. but EFFECTIVE bullshit
Re:Apple remains in control through non-free softw (Score:4, Insightful)
Completely off topic since this was just about the concept of blocking porn (if they were, they have the power to filter it through Safari.)
But you intrigue me, I had never heard of apple deleting apps from users devices, nor have I heard of them alloing some users to run software that others are not allowed to run.
Can you list links and examples of remote app deletion and apps that are not allowed to be used by certain consumers?
We would not stand for this control in any other medium. It should not be up to anyone but the owner of the device to exert control over what they wish to read or run.
Agree, but why people do this mess over the iPhone but not over video game consoles? They are even more closed and have been around longer. There do are a few groups working on their jailbreak but you don't hear the huge accusations against THOSE manufacturers. What makes Apple any more evil than Nintendo, Sega (in their day), Sony and Microsoft in the gaming department?
Re:You mean even Hef (Score:5, Insightful)
They know their target audience has no interest in seeing naked women.
They know their target audience gets easy access to the real thing. :P
Re:Apple remains in control through non-free softw (Score:5, Insightful)
Agree, but why people do this mess over the iPhone but not over video game consoles? They are even more closed and have been around longer. There do are a few groups working on their jailbreak but you don't hear the huge accusations against THOSE manufacturers. What makes Apple any more evil than Nintendo, Sega (in their day), Sony and Microsoft in the gaming department?
For a number of reasons. The primary one is that Nintendo, Sega, Sony and Microsoft didn't and don't try to portray their devices as all inclusive. No one buys a 360 to surf the net, Microsoft doesn't push the Xbox as an alternative to a computer or claim that their device is perfect for tasks other than gaming. No one buys a Wii to type up documents and Nintendo doesn't market it that way, they market it as a game console. But Apple and their fanboys seem to think that an iPad is essentially a replacement for a laptop for most tasks and not a crippled machine at twice the price of a laptop. They seem to think that it does everything one could ever want with no room for improvement and rather than expanding their line, addressing user concerns and removing the walled garden, Apple (and their fanboys) instead prefer to claim that users really have no problems with them and that what they are doing is some task that they shouldn't do in the first place. A game console is marketed to do one thing, play games, just like the Kindle is marketed to do one thing, to read books. The iPad is marketed to do anything you want to do on a laptop and fails at that goal and is naturally taking backlash because of it.
And "a few groups" working on jailbreaks? The Wii has a thriving homebrew scene with many, many applications and creative programs. And while Nintendo does release a yearly update to block homebrew, it is generally worked around within a few days and you can go back to playing with no loss in functionality. Not only that, but there is full documentation to use Wii hardware with standard PC bluetooth hardware. The 360 has a small homebrew scene but it is limited mostly by Microsoft's banning of people with modified 360 consoles on Xbox live and is, quite honestly, used mostly for warez than legitimate homebrew when compared to things like the DS, PSP and Wii homebrew scenes. Most people don't criticize MS for their stance for a number of reasons, first off the Xbox live marketplace is pretty open and the other fact is that it is their services you are accessing and it is their right to choose to allow you on there or not. The PS3 though is a different story, there has been a number of developments, a number of patches and a number of features Sony has removed from the PS3 simply to thwart homebrew and Sony has been fairly and justly criticized for their actions, but again, Sony never marketed the PS3 as anything more than a blu-ray player, game system and media centre, however, they did market it as being able to run alternate OSes and when Sony removed that feature, many users I believe in the EU were able to get their money back because of Sony's fraudulent advertising.
Re:Apple remains in control through non-free softw (Score:5, Insightful)
I hate to burst your bubble, but the Android Market have the same authority. They can remote kill an app just as easily, no?
http://android-developers.blogspot.com/2010/06/exercising-our-remote-application.html [blogspot.com]