This weekend Apple made a sweeping change to its application guidelines, banning any material that could be deemed titillating. Well, not exactly any material, but certainly that of smaller developers. In another sweeping decision that’s rife with ambiguity, Apple has denied and pulled applications from small-name developers whose content was deemed too sexy for the App Store. How do you define too sexy? Pretty much anything that involves showing some skin.

As I mentioned, though, there are exceptions. Sports Illustrated still has its Swimsuit app available and Playboy will reportedly be allowed to keep its content live. This is a surefire way to piss off a lot of people. Some four days after the ban, Phil Schiller finally talked to the New York Times about the bans. “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 said.

Wait, isn’t that why you guys implemented parental controls? And what of the objectionable material warnings? And what about the fact that anyone wanting to see boobs can still use Safari to get to every porn site on the web? As with previous app decisions, this one reeks of whimsy. Oh, did I ask why Sports Illustrated models and Playmates are somehow less offensive to those women and parents than the girls in the “Beautiful Boobs” app? I bet it’s because they aren’t just the fantasized digital mockups of women with bodies all airbrushed and touched up. These are real women, appearing in real magazines, sticking it to the misogynistic majority by using their vast intelligence to make money with the bodies that have been so objectified in the past. That must be it.

The iPhone is loaded with apps featuring images of hot girls (even though several have slipped up and been yanked recently), but none host the quality hotties you’ll find in Sports Illustrated Group’s SI:Swimsuit for the iPhone. The app debuted today, featuring fine looking ladies and, oh yeah, I guess there’s a calendar too.

Actually, the calendar seems pretty cool. I’ve never been the type to need a boobie fix so badly I’d download an app just to see girls in bikinis. Now, if my calendar happened to show me those same girls daily, I might not mind as much. That’s just what the SI:Swimsuit app aims to do. The calendar in question is actually a sports calendar that allows you to monitor up to six professional or college teams in full – schedules, scores, etc. You also get to pick which models show up in your calendar, so you can display your Danica Patrick love to all your friends.

The app also features picture and video coverage for all the models in the 2009 edition, including the body painting series. I’m actually shocked Apple let that one slide, but hey, they’re not exactly consistent. The app will cost you $2.99.

A photo purportedly showing a naked 15-year-old has made its way onto the iPhone App Store through an app called BeautyMeter this week, despite Apple’s strong stance against objectionable content in the store.

Last week the application “Hottest Apps” was quickly pulled from the App Store due to “objectionable content,” namely, female nudity. It was adult female nudity, though, unlike today’s whopping PR nightmare for the iPhone.

BeautyMeter allows users to upload photos of themselves and subsequently rate one another on body, face, and clothing appeal. If you’ve been to Hot or Not, you get the idea. Today, an iPhone app review site called KRAPPS found a picture of what appears to be a 15-year-old girl topless and partially nude below the waist in BeautyMeter. Nearly 5,000 users have voted on the picture.

As of this posting, the application is still available in the app store, though the picture may have been removed. I would expect the app to at least get pulled for review before day’s end.

According to the developer’s website, funnymals.com, they do not review submissions on a photo by photo basis. Rather, they go in and clean up “from time to time.” This certainly gives plenty of room for photos like the illegal nude in question to slip through. Users have even commented in the app store that, “There shouldnt be 14 year olds nude on there [sic].”

The developer does supposedly capture your iPhone’s unique device ID when you upload a photo, making it possible to track down anyone who has posted illegal content. Neither Apple nor Funnymal will likely have legal liability in this case, though it does raise questions as to how Apple will handle user-generated content in future applications.

Update:BeautyMeter has officially been pulled.

Image from Wired

Yesterday we ran a story concerning the application “Hottest Girls,” available up until yesterday in the iPhone App Store. Prior to OS 3.0, the application showed pictures of scantily clad women and allowed users to rate those images. An update yesterday pushed topless images through the application. The app was pulled within a few hours.

The developer posted to his website later in the day, claiming the application was “sold out” due to server load from all the fresh boobies beaming to iPhones around the world. In truth, it was Apple pulled the app for, you guessed it, explicit content.

When Steve Jobs announced the App Store, porn was among the first mention of all things verboten. Other unapproved apps included privacy invasion and other malicious apps. “Hottest Girls” would have been the first app sanctioned by Apple with explicit content.

As an apple rep told CNN:

Apple will not distribute applications that contain inappropriate content, such as pornography. The developer of this application added inappropriate content directly from their server after the application had been approved and distributed, and after the developer had subsequently been asked to remove some offensive content. This was a direct violation of the terms of the iPhone Developer Program. The application is no longer available on the App Store.

Once again we have more noise than necessary concerning porn on the infamous iPhone. Explicit content is still viewable on the device via the web browser, though I think the real issue here is whether or not Apple wishes to be complicit in skin traffic. Apparently they do not.

The first iPhone app showing any sort of nudity debuted today and has since been pulled from the app store.

The app, called Hottest Girls, has been around longer than the parental controls that could supposedly allow explicit content to be viewed within an app on Apple’s iPhone. Previous to today’s update, the application simply showed pictures of girls (mostly asian) in various types of scanty clothing. The app was supposed to be the first to feature adult content.

There’s been no word concerning the removal of the app from the app store yet. I’ll be surprised to see Apple try to keep the pics from returning. It’s not particularly hard to find porn on the phone, considering it has a nearly fully featured browser. You can imagine, though, the massive influx of applications we’ll see if porn apps get the official sanction.

For now, looks like you’ll have to stick to Safari to get your mobile porn on.