Have you noticed that the ‘you must be 17 or older’ warning is being shown in iTunes more and more? I have a ton of apps on my iMac, and there are usually a good 20 or so updates to download every week. Very often, when I click ‘download all free updates’, I get this warning first. Even when the apps I’m updating are perfectly innocuous, and have no connection with any type of obscenity or violence.
But this isn’t some mistake by Apple. In fact, it is part of their policy to rate all apps that rely on user generated content as 17+. Before this policy was clearly spelt out, there certainly was some comlnfusion. For instance, rejected the popular Twitter client for iPhone Tweetie because one of the trending topics on Twitter at the tine contained an objectionable word. Apple approved the app later, but that was an early indicator of how Apple would approach this problem.
Today, Apple clearly follows this policy of giving an ‘R’ rating to applications that provide acess to user generated content. This might seem unfair at times, but when you consider the sort of content such apps can offer, you realize this is a good policy. Consider the recently launched app TWI (Texts While Intoxicated). I’ll leave you with a screenshot from this app.
