I am the developer of Tits & Boobies and Pussy Lovers.

I received a call from someone at Apple and he said that the apps were being removed from the store as they were deemed inappropriate for the iTunes Store. Although I did not ask him if they received complaints, upon inquiring about what it was that was inappropriate about the apps, I was told that the title did not match the content and was asked to change the title and the "Education" category. I asked him if I could change the content instead, as there were other similarly named apps on the store, and got back something that equated to a maybe (though he did specifically say that they weren't asking me to put pictures of Vaginas in the Pussy Lovers app).

Essentially my understanding is that it is okay to sell an app on the store called Tits and Boobies as long as it has pictures of women's breasts (the more common meaning of those words) but it is not okay to sell a funny app called Tits and Boobies that has pictures of birds in it. Those apps are quite popular with combined over 300,000 downloads and most people we have shown them to get a laugh out of them and use them to play pranks on friends.

From a developer's perspective, we just want some consistency and more communication in the way the apps are reviewed and featured on the iTunes Store. Our Kamasutra application was initially rejected twice for containing inappropriate content even though it was rated 17+. Recently we discovered other similarly themed apps on Sexual Positions in the store and re-submitted and it was approved this time around. When where the policies in the store changed and why were we not informed so that we had an opportunity to resubmit our app.

Editor's note

This is a new twist to the old Apple iPhone app rejection story. This time it is not the content, but the "mismatch" between title and rated G content, even while the text is technically accurate. They have to change the content—although no vaginas would be ever allowed in the iPhone—or change the titles and categories. And there's no way around that.

I can see Apple's side of the story: The title and descriptions may be correct, but obviously designed to be misleading. Even while there is no real harm if someone makes the mistake—the applications were free—it sets a precedent.

But Samir has a point too. The apps are harmless, the descriptions are technically accurate, and the content is completely clean and apt for people of any age. Yet, other apps with the same descriptions, and full of potentially conflictive content—at the public relations level—are available for purchase in the store.

At the end, the fact is that the rules are still confusing. The apps were approved for the Education category after the titles were censored by Apple. So I guess that there was an active effort to test the app, understand what it does, and approve it according to whatever guidelines the iTunes Store people use. So why take it down? Just because it got published in Gizmodo and it was put under the spotlight? Was it just a mistake on the approval level? Or did Apple make this new rule after the article, to avoid a public relations problem?

Whatever it is, one thing is clear to me: Nobody is ever going to be happy with this process, which I'm afraid will remain imperfect forever.—Jesús Díaz

iTunes 9.0.2 adds support for Apple TV software version 3.0, adds an option for a dark background for Grid View, and improves support for accessibility. [Ed. note: The dark background option is a bigger deal than it might seem]

iTunes 9 comes with many new features and improvements, including:

• An improved look and feel, including a new Column Browser for easily browsing your artists or albums, movies, TV shows, and more.

• iTunes Store has a brand new look, with improved navigation for quick and easy exploration.

• iTunes LP and iTunes Extras create unique experiences that feature exclusive interviews, videos, photos, and more - available with select album and movie purchases on the iTunes Store.

• Home Sharing helps you manage your family's iTunes collection between computers in your home. iTunes can automatically transfer new purchases, or you can choose just the items you want.

• Genius Mixes are created for you by iTunes and play songs from your library that go great together.

• iPod and iPhone syncing now allows you to organize your iPhone and iPod touch home screens directly in iTunes. Syncing is now also more flexible, allowing you to sync individual artists, genres, or TV show and Podcast episodes.

• iTunes U items are now organized into their own section in your iTunes library.

• Sync with iPod nano (5th generation), iPod classic (Fall 2009), and iPod touch (Fall 2009).

• iTunes 9 also includes many other improvements, such as HE-AAC encoding and playback, more flexibility with Smart Playlists rules, simpler organization of your media files inside an iTunes Media folder, and more.

Deja vu, am I right? [Apple]

OK, it's not "pornography" (I can tell because I don't want to pay for it, to riff on the old saying) but there's a 99-cent photography book called Boundless being sold in the App Store, which—in certain zoomed-in cases—flashes the nip. Here. Enjoy. You can thank me later. (But seriously don't.) [MobileCrunch]

As a career journalist who has spent the last 2.5 years working for a "blog" that's also a major media outlet, I was surprised by the FTC's request that "bloggers" disclose gifts or payment for reviews. Obviously Giz staffers don't accept gifts or payment for reviews—or, mind you, any kind of airfare or hotel fees paid for by a company—but the FTC's ruling is so naive it's not funny. Yes, these things should be monitored but, while the internet certainly plays a role, the problem isn't specifically a bloggy one.

Take TV: There have been plenty of reported cases of open bribery, and every time a product appears on a show, you should consider the likelihood of payola. In print publications, the bribes simply take a different form: Many magazines—both trade and mainstream—hire contributors and even staffers who happily get shuttled around the world on corporate dimes (used to be first class, now it's business class, poor babies), getting put up in nice hotels for nothing, collecting sweet juicy frequent flier miles while they're at it. This is standard marketing procedure for many beloved companies, and common in all major review-intensive industries. (*cough* auto industry *cough*) I have been gently castigated by "peers" on several occasions for refusing trips to Asia and Europe, because (obviously) it made the people accepting the trips feel self-conscious.

I love a call for ethics as much as the next reasonably ethical SOB, but man, this is a can of worms that can't possibly open and close solely on bloggers (and the related Facebookers and Tweeters), however the hell the FTC attempts to define them. [NYT]

Remember Sony's ice-cream-cone of a motion controller, showed off at E3? Well, according to seriously unconfirmed accounts, its codename is Sphere. There, you can finally get some sleep. [Engadget]

Not asleep yet? This will surely do the trick: Apple belonged to something called the US Chamber of Commerce (which to me sounds like an organization consisting entirely of slightly overweight white guys with moustaches who like to grouse about the unfairness of pretty much everything), only now Apple doesn't belong to it. See, the USCoC opposed a bill in Congress that would charge carbon tariffs on imports. Apple supports this and other environmental legislation, so they quit in protest. BOOM. Or something. [Mac Rumors]

Nighty night!

The RFID-equipped member card is still needed for the ignition system, and to unlock the car at the start of a session. That's a bit of a let down, but I guess it does make sense. Once that first step is out of the way, that's when you can use the iPhone to lock/unlock the car remotely.

Zipcar says it's working to add a visual snapshot of car availability (like you get on the Website), greater flexibility in reservation changes, and more detailed instructions to your parking spot.

If you have an iPhone (or iPod touch) and use Zipcar, this should probably be a no-brainer to test out. If you do, let us know how you go. [Zipcar (iTunes Link) | Zipcar]

It kind of sux that even a monitoring app got banned. But, according to Apple:

…this category of applications is often used for the purpose of infringing third party rights. We have chosen to not publish this type of application to the App Store.

So no torrent apps, at all, period. Right then.

Instructions on how to install µMonitor on a Jailbroken iPhone can be found here: [µMonitor via TorrentFreak]

iPhone and iPod touch users can already buy third-party products within applications using iTunes accounts. However, according to these rumors, the new scheme will open the door for other companies outside the store ecosystem to use iTunes as their payment gate for whatever goods or services they may sell.

It makes sense, as people are used to pay with iTunes one-click system—which is licensed from Amazon—anyway. Why not extend to participating companies and make an easy dollar? We will see if the gossip is true or not soon enough. [Silicon Alley Insider]

Hottest Girls was the first one to appear, disappearing within hours of its launch. Then BeautyMeter, which was pulled shortly after introduced

Why is Apple approving these apps in the first place, knowing they are going to pull them down later?

And since these applications get their content via the internet, should Apple take Safari or Mail out of the iPhone too? Or Beehive, which can be used to send pictures on the fly to other users? And Facebook too? My camera?

Yeah, that's what I thought. This is stupid and has to stop. Either you apply the same filter to everything, or you open the application market for real. Just make sure things work, and are not illegal on its own, not because of the potential content they may fetch from the internet. [Krapps]

Here you have them. Just set your computer's clock to Friday 24 and you will be able to see them yourself.

Not surprisingly, Facebook is the number one top free app ever, while Crash Bandicoot wins on the paid category—which apparently it's all about games and toys and games. [Mac Magazine (Portuguese) via The Apple Lounge (Italian)]

They're $20—yes, about as much as a Blu-ray—and they'll pop up as the usual $5 HD rentals within 30 days after that. It kicks off with Quantum of Solace and Twilight for pre-order, with Transporter 3 (Jason Statham, YES) and other blockbusters available right now.

HD movies are pretty hefty—about 2-3x bigger than standard def, running between three and four gigs, and then you get a bonus file on top of that, the iPod- and iPhone-compatible standard-def version—so I hope you've got some sick NAS storage for these whoppers. But is $20 really worth it? [Apple]

According to the blog of Outdustry—a music industry consultancy firm in China—the market is getting inundated with this pirate cards, with prices falling quickly. You can find $200 iTunes Music cards in Taobao for as low as $10, and the blog is reporting prices of $2.60.

Nobody knows what this means for Apple yet. For sure, a change of the formula that generates the vouchers looks like a definitive possibility, but that won't solve the situation of legal cards already in the market. [Outdustry and Taobao via MusicAlly]

Perfectly appropriate for the financiapocalypse, this week's inspired selection is heavy on the Arnold—Terminator 2, Total Recall and Last Action Hero—with a dash of kickass President Harrison Ford in Air Force One thrown in for good measure. It makes me feel better just knowing that if they were real, they could shoot our way back into prosperity in just over 90 minutes. [iTunes via Ars]

Go to Terminal and type:

defaults write com.apple.iTunes show-store-arrow-links -bool FALSE

That will hide the links. To kill 'em forever, type:

defaults delete com.apple.iTunes show-store-arrow-links

[maxosxhints Thanks Rami!]

Update: Thanks to the commenters, here's the windows fix.

When asked if the Beatles tracks are going to be online, Apple's Steve Jobs, who was also speaking at the press event, answered, "I want to know that, too." Jobs did seem hopeful that this DRM-free concept would spread to other labels beyond just EMI, saying that EMI is pioneering a concept that will probably become very popular. He added that he couldn't comment on the behind-the scenes discussions, and cited Sony's disastrous experience when it tried placing DRM on its CDs. What did Jobs say about DRM on video and movies?

When asked if DRM would be removed from videos and movies from Disney—the company in which Jobs is a major stockholder—Jobs replied that he saw video and music as two different things, where video was never distributed DRM-free as 90 percent of music has in the past.

EMI said it was going to allow all retailers to sell the DRM-free tunes, and they will be available in AAC, WMA and MP3 formats. ITunes will offer the EMI DRM-free catalog as premium downloads, with twice the sound quality of currently available AACs, and they'll cost $1.29 per song rather than the $.99 per song from the EMI catalog that will still be sold with DRM. – Charlie White

Press Release [EMI]

Movie prices still hover around the $10 mark; no other changes were made to the iTunes Store nearest we can tell. – Nicholas Deleon

Press Release [Apple]

The idea of having a limitless selection of every movie ever filmed is compelling, but it's rife with so many gotchas that the majority of movie fans are staying away in droves. To put it into perspective, Ben Fritz at Variety offers a sobering stat: the all-time total number of legal movie downloads in history is less than the first day's sales of the DVD of Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest. That really does suck, doesn't it?

Here are the Top 10 reasons why the idea of digital downloads of movies hasn't gained much traction yet:

1. Pricing: Apple's iTunes store charges $14.99 for a new release and $9.99 for an older movie, and Wal-Mart is expected to come close to matching that except for brand-new releases for which it will charge $19.88. That's comparable to the price of a DVD, but with that you get a disc you can hold in your hand, cover art, a tangible item. Plus, that price is a whole lot more than you'd pay to rent a movie at Blockbuster or have one delivered to your mailbox from Netflix.

2. Meager selection of movies: although Wal-Mart promises movie downloads from the "big six" studios (Walt Disney, Warner Brothers, Paramount, Sony, 20th Century Fox and Universal), it still won't be able to match the vast collection of an ordinary video store, at least not for a while. And the iTunes store's selection of films is so slim, it's just pathetic.

3. No computer in the TV room: Most people don't have a computer near the TV, and getting a downloaded movie from one to the other is awkward at best.

4. Quality: As HDTV finally begins to catch on, even ordinary people are becoming accustomed to ultra-high-quality movie viewing, and downloads are still mired in the world of standard definition. Of course, this will change over time, but that's not happening anytime soon.

5. Force of Habit: It's hard to change the habits of John Q. Public, especially when it comes to comfortable routines such as TV watching. Just look at how long it took HDTV to gain any interest whatsoever. Even some techno-geeks we know are inexplicably clinging to standard definition television.

6. What's the diff?: If you can record, say, Mission Impossible 3 via HBO onto your Series 3 TiVo in full quality HDTV, what's the difference between that and downloading the same movie from the iTunes store? Yes, those staggered release dates imposed upon us by the studios make some downloads (and DVD purchases/rentals) more appealing, but many people don't mind waiting a month or two to get a high-definition viewing of a semi-current movie, rather than going through all the gyrations of downloading that same flick.

7. Download Speed: Many broadband connections are not fast enough to download a movie in a reasonable amount of time. And then, let's don't even think about downloading HDTV movies, which will take four times longer to download.

8. Broadband flakiness: Another problem with broadband connections is that many customers are frequently throttled, where the amount of data they're allowed to download is capped after a certain magical number. Broadband providers are trying to choke bandwidth as much as possible, just to be sure their services are profitable. Sure, might think you have "unlimited" Internet service, but it's only unlimited as long as you don't use it much.

9. DRM bullshit: Even if you are able to solve all the problems with downloading movies, there's still gobs of digital rights management slathered onto that data, restricting how and when you can play it back. Nobody but the greedmeisters at the Hollywood studios likes this.

10. Too complicated: Finally, all of that knowledge and computer know-how needed for downloading movies is simply nonexistent in the skill sets of the average movie viewer. They're just not willing to climb the learning curve to get digital data from the PC to the TV screen when they can effortlessly pop in a DVD.

Until these 10 issues are at least halfway resolved, it's going to be a while before digital downloads gain acceptance for mass audiences. And we, the gadget obsessed, aren't much interested in the concept until we can download at least 720p quality movies that are reasonably current. Our prediction? Digital downloads won't catch up with DVD sales and rentals until at least 2010. – Charlie White

Online market researcher Hitwise said more than four times as many people (413%) visited the iTunes store this Christmas than the same day last year. All that traffic brought the site to its knees early this week, tossing out error messages to some while others were able to download music without incident.

Apple might want to consider other methods of moving digital content to customers if it's ever going to consider HD movie downloads. BitTorrent anyone? – Charlie White

Music denied — shoppers overwhelm iTunes [CNN]

Maybe consumers are getting educated about DRM? One would hope.– Nicholas Deleon

Apple denies download sales fall [BBC News]