Porn is the Poorest Excuse for a Closed iPhone OS

Today, after Steve Jobs wowed the world with multitasking and a few other “tentpoles” he answered questions about the future of the iPhone OS, but they may as well called the features fenceposts since they have a pretty big fence around the iPhone OS. After the big iPhone 4.0 event Steve Jobs took questions from the reporters in attendance and when asked about the closed platform, he blamed porn.

Ryan Block of gdgt was the one who asked Steve, if Apple would allow unsigned applications, like Google does with Android and Palm with WebOS, to which Steve responded.

“There’s a porn store for Android… you can download it, your kids can download it. That’s a place we don’t want to go, so we’re not going to.”- Steve Jobs, Apple CEO

To be blunt citing pornography and pulling a “think of the children” argument, as the reason for a closed environment on a device which can access the web is just ridiculous. It’s almost as if Job’s forgot that he is constantly touting the full web experience on the iPhone OS. A web experience that not only contains porn — but even contains pornographic websites designed to work on the iPhone, iPod Touch and yes, even the iPad. That’s right Steve, and every local news channel looking for an 11 o’clock special, if a device has an internet connection; odds are someone can look at porn on it without a dedicated app.

There’s even an app to block porn on the iPhone and iPad, that lets parents control what their kids see and do online instead of trusting Apple to know what’s can be displayed on their gadgets.

I’m not saying that porn is a good thing, but it is the worst reason to say that you need to lock down the iPhone and iPad from running unsigned applications that allow users to do cool things like use your phone as a modem and more. If you really want to explain why the iPhone OS remains locked down the least you could do is make up something about protecting system integrity or maintaining a consistent user experience instead of treating us like idiots.

There are plenty of reasons to allow users to run unsigned apps, like testing out the beta of Rhapsody for Android. Sure it allows some users to download a porn application (MiKandi if you must know) to their phone; but it’s hardly a reason to put up a giant fence around a really cool playground and tell us that you’re taking your ball and going home as soon as someone does something you don’t like.

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