Apple Issues Formal Apology for 'Baby Shaker' App

Apple, one day after pulling the controversial "Baby Shaker" application from the App Store, issued a formal apology. The fervor darkens what was otherwise a bright week for Apple, with the company posting its best-ever results for a non-holiday fiscal quarter, including the shipment of 3.7 million iPhones.

Apple issued an apology for its "Baby Shaker" App, in which users could "shake" a virtual infant using the iPhone, a day after removing the controversial application from the App Store.

"This application was deeply offensive and should not have been approved for distribution on the App Store," Natalie Kerris, a spokesperson for Apple, said in an April 23 statement. "When we learned of this mistake, the app was removed immediately. We sincerely apologize for this mistake and thank our customers for bringing this to our attention."
Despite removing the 99-cent "Baby Shaker" application from the App Store, which had originally been posted on April 20, calls for an apology from the company had continued unabated.

Apple has pulled Apps before, usually offering a reason to support the decision. A clause in the iPhone SDK agreement states that "Applications must not contain any obscene, pornographic, offensive or defamatory content or materials of any kind."

"Baby Shaker" developer Sikalosoft also produces another application for the iPhone, Dice Mosaic, which renders photos into black-and-white mosaics. 

Apple has previously pulled applications with sexual or violent content, including a knife-happy App called "Slasher," but many games with occasionally risqu??« or borderline-gruesome content still remain in the App Store.

The App Store currently offers some 25,000 applications, nearly a billion of which have been downloaded since the store's July 2008 launch. The most-downloaded free applications include Facebook for iPhone and Google Earth.

Apps from companies such as SAP and Salesforce.com have made the iPhone a more robust device for the enterprise.

On April 22, Apple announced the company's best-ever results for a non-holiday fiscal quarter, with shipments of 2.2 million Macs, 11.01 million iPods, and 3.7 million iPhones in the quarter.