iPhone Baby Shaking Game Causes Controversy
Browsing through the Apple app store can be a bit tedious when looking for quality content. Many companies have jumped on the popularity of the portable device by releasing floods of cheap games that are simply knock-offs of flash games or other iPhone games. Generally they utilize either a touch screen interface, tilt controls or a combination of the two, but a few games have utilized a shaking option, one of which has stirred up a hornets nest of controversy.
The game has you shaking your iPhone (or iPod Touch) in order to quiet a crying baby, an act which if carried out in real life would result in death or severe injury. As you might expect as soon as people got wind of this a fair amount of stink was raised. Apple has since pulled the application from the store after the waves of criticism from various baby shaking prevention groups.
This has since raised other controversies, including a New York Times blogger who raises the question of how far Apple will take their censorship. Unfortunately while I agree that Apple should limit censorship to truly tastelessly offensive materials the fact remains that the app store is owned and run by Apple, giving them not only the ability but the right to censor or ban any content they wish. The big question that arises out of all of this is whether or not Apple would be so quick to pull something that was generating a much larger revenue stream.