Pegoraro: editing of Apple's apps confuses developers

Rob Pegoraro, of Faster Forward, takes on the Apple as it prunes down its apps store:

It's been a confusing few weeks for developers of software for Apple's iPhone.

First Apple purged the iPhone's App Store of "naughty" and "sexy" applications that offered users more than a peek at female bodies--or, presumably, male bodies, though somehow we never hear about those apps. (Note that the App Store imposes age restrictions on applications, allowing them to be locked out with the iPhone and iTunes' parental controls.) At the same time, Apple kept around salacious applications from such name-brand sources as Playboy and Sports Illustrated. That double standard infuriated some iPhone users.

Not long after, a round of wireless-networking tools got yanked--but in this case, Apple could point to its long-standing rule against developers using "private frameworks," elements of the iPhone's operating system that it's reserved for its own use. (Keeping some "application programming interfaces" private for stability, security or performance reasons is a routine policy in the software business, although in most cases an OS developer can't enforce these rules the way Apple does on the iPhone.)

Read here for the full column.