It's not like that. Unless you actively seek porn, you won't find it, be it in the web, be it in mobile applications for platforms other than Apple's.
The right analogy is your daughter being unable to find porn when she actively and deliberately seeks and want it because some authority deemed it immoral and banned its production.
This is not what I expected from Apple and not what I want for the future.
Even if you buy the claim that there is no keyword overlap between porn & non-porn queries (which I don't) and that porn purveyors don't love to spam keyword space (which I don't) you still have to consider this:
...and that if a parent busts their child searching for it and finding it, the puritan parent is as likely to go after the store as they are to deal with their child.
Allowing porn apps into the store is a messy business proposition. I'm only surprised it didn't get shot down sooner. Not expecting the same policy from any brand of their magnitude is naïve.
And, I have to say, desiring to have porn distributed as executable code is a crazy thing to wish for. I wouldn't even trust it in a sandbox. No industry abuses APIs more than those guys.
> the puritan parent is as likely to go after the store as they are to deal with their child.
And that is one of the dangerous slopes we can see. It's not the store owner's responsibility to educate the kid - that's what parents are for. And the puritan parent has no right to prevent my kids from getting what I allow them to get.
And it's not only about porn. Apple must clearly draw the line it will not cross. Today it's porn, emulators and anything that's cross-compiled. A cartoonist was blocked already (and unblocked after that). Would a network anonymizer be allowed? For how long?
Ok, think of it this way: imagine that you're pitching the idea of allowing porn apps into the App Store. How do you convince the board of directors that porn should be associated with the brand? You'll have to do better than slippery slope alarmism. So what do you say to make your business case?
The only reason they would be associated with porn now is that they took a stance against porn in the first place.
Of all apps, only a small fraction of them would end up being porn - present approval process could still happen. Adult content would also be segregated into an adult store - with separate authorization processes so if puritan parents decide to make it difficult for their offspring to get porn, difficult it would be.
And, most of all, this is not about porn - it's about the notion of a walled garden as being desirable. It's, like someone mentioned, that garden of pure ideology.
Jobs, now, is the Big Brother on the screen. It's up to us to wield the hammers.
I see no contradiction. All you would see is applications the account owner deem appropriate for you. It would be no more associated with porn than it is with, say, books.
I guess that's why you're not in charge of brand management.
Among the tech-geek demographic the iPhone is already associated with farting applications. It's a common way to deride the quality of apps at the store when someone gets their knickers in a twist about the reasons Jobs gave for section 3.3.1 - and that's just a current event.
Imagine running an adult store for a decade. People talk. People read. Hiding an adult store behind an individual's preferences would not prevent word from getting out.
I guarantee you that if Disney tried to run a triple-X store in the way you suggest that knowledge of it would get out and it would cause an enormous shit-storm.
Everything any customer experiences that fires a neuron linked to your name or your logo or your products is associated with your brand.
The right analogy is your daughter being unable to find porn when she actively and deliberately seeks and want it because some authority deemed it immoral and banned its production.
This is not what I expected from Apple and not what I want for the future.