June 2009: Hours after the App Store introduction of Hottest Girls, seemingly the first Apple-authorized iPhone and iPod touch application to feature nudity, the computing giant reverses course and removes the app. Hottest Girls, which promised consumers topless models alongside a gallery of "2200+ sexy bikini babes and lingerie models," briefly emerged as an Internet cause célèbre, with many pundits speculating that the application heralded a new, less conservative era in the App Store's evolution. However, Apple contends that the topless images were added to Hottest Girls only after the application ran the submission gauntlet.
"Apple will not distribute applications that contain inappropriate content, such as pornography," says Apple spokesperson Tom Neumayr in a statement. "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."
