Apple removes 'Baby Shaker' from App Store
Apple appears to have pulled Baby Shaker from the App Store.
(Credit: Screenshot by Tom Krazit/CNET)Apple has removed the Baby Shaker application from the App Store, just hours after it was discovered.
The application still shows up in the App Store search, but upon clicking on the title, an error message appears. Baby Shaker, a game in which the user is invited to silence a baby's cries by violently shaking an iPhone, appeared on the App Store Monday despite Apple's policy of banning "offensive" iPhone applications.
Company representatives have still not responded to inquires about how Baby Shaker made it into the App Store in the first place. In the past, Apple has shown no hesitation in rejecting iPhone applications that it felt contained offensive language or objectionable content.
Tom Krazit writes about the ever-expanding world of Internet search, including Google, Yahoo, online advertising, and portals, as well as the evolution of mobile computing. He has written about traditional PC companies, chip manufacturers, and mobile computers, spending the last three years covering Apple. E-mail Tom. 
Thank goodness I still have my "Smoking Baby" incense burner.
Now Apple- please explain why you allowed this to be in the store in the first place? THAT is the real question to be answered here. If Apple's past history of silence is any indication, we won't be hearing any answer anytime soon.
It will quietly disappear and everyone will pretend that it never happened.
Why, I only post here to complain, the same as anyone who posts here, including you.
its like when "A Certain Company" removed Warnings Advising its users to download anti-virus, Right After they were posted on blogs all over!!!
hehehe
"No children are harmed by a picture, sound, and motion sensing timer."
Nobody is physically harmed by child pornography either. Does that make it right?
However, drawn images of children is legal in some places. I don't think it's right, but it harms no one, so it's legal.
That said, this harms no human beings.
I hope that this incident highlights the real issue with the apple app store to who ever it is in apple that can make the proper changes.
And it has nothing to do with morals.
Or a stress-reliever, at least.
Like a sqeeze toy.
Also, can you explain how the application promoted shaking babies, considering the baby would go silent and get a red 'X' over each eye? Sounds to me like it was showing the consequences of shaking a baby, namely that it could die.
If you didn't like it, no one forced you to buy it. I wouldn't have bought it either (besides, I already have San Andreas to take my aggression out on - here piggy piggy piggy ... click click BOOM! :)).
Vegaman_Dan - That is exactly what I'm wondering! They supposedly have this complex "app vetting process" and then something like THIS gets by their filters? What on earth?!
As the mother of a son who was shaken, the founder of Stop SBS, and the Communications Director for the Sarah Jane Brain Foundation (http://www.TheBrainProject.org), thank you to everyone else who expressed outrage over this horrible application.
Best,
Jennipher Dickens
Or maybe a modification, that once that baby has been shaken to death it goes to a screen to donate and or link to your thebrainproject.org site.
That way it is educational and beneficial to your cause.
Writing an application is form of expression. It can be as creative as writing a novel or poem, painting a abstract, or sculpting a statue. If we think the novel obscene, find the painting pornographic, and the statue blasphemous should we gather a peasant mob armed with pitchforks and torches demanding these work be buried at sea? We may not agree with every expression, we may find some forms of expression deeply disturbing and horrible, but if we value our ability to speak our mind we need to defend the abilities of others to do the same. I don't see this as a right, but as a responsibility we owe to other members of society. Sometimes this demands that we defend that which we hate.
Apple, as a private corporation has every right to decide what apps it will and won't sell. We as individual have every right to place pressure on corporations to make them see our way of thinking. It just saddens me (and sickens me a little) to think that demanding the effective banning of a creative work is right answer.
Just because its not for sale on the App Store, doesn't mean that it isn't still being installed on jailbreaked iphones.
Come on people, spend your free time attacking any one who tries to sell something that you do not approve of... instead of not buying it.
Don't stop here, go attack 7-11 for selling porn magazines, sex shops for selling... who know's what, and PepBoys for selling radar detectors for speeders!
Good luck. I'm going to go about living my life, knowing what's right for me, my family and my wallet.
-Message from a Buddhist.
-Message from someone who probably knows more about Buddhism than you do.
Why are we all so upset about a game that simulates shaking a baby when we can easily go out and get games that simulates us feeding someone into a wood chipper, or tearing them apart with a shotgun, or beating them to death with our fists, or running over pedestrians with cars? Why is this depiction of outrageous violence horrific and evil while other simulations of outrageous violence are fully acceptable.
Its an artifical and arbitrary line people have drawn which really serves no purpose.
This baby game is hardly a simulator. The picture is a stylized sketch, the "dead baby" pic is an incredibly mild two-big-red-X's. You don't need to know how to shake a cell phone to know how to shake a baby.
Also, this is an application which hurt no children. If you think that by playing a 99 cent minigame that's not even that interesting, you're now more likely to want to shake a real baby, then you have the issues here.
I don't think anyone was mistaking this application for a 'how to shake babies' guide. Nobody is confusing the game with the real thing either. It's the point that it exists in the first place.
Remember that Apple denied an application that would simulate throwing shoes at then-President Bush at a simulated press conference, calling it offensive. Apparently while that was not permitted by Apple's vetting process for approval, the shaking baby app was.
There is no explanation from Apple on this, only more confusion and questions.
- by baconstang April 22, 2009 2:49 PM PDT
- I guess I'll just have to keep shaking my baby.... or launching my kitty from a kanon.
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