Steve Jobs: Folks Who Want Porn Can Buy Android

You won't be getting any iPorn. But you can go buy an Android phone if you want it as an option.

Since Apple has the authority to approve what's sold on its App Store for things that'll run on the iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad, it can also control what users of its devices aren't allowed to see. One such category of things that Apple wants to keep away from its App Store is anything of pornographic nature, and if consumers aren't happy about that, then Steve Jobs will point them to buying an Android phone.

One concerned Apple customer wrote to Steve Jobs:

Steve,
I was converted to Apple products with the announcement of the iPhone 3G. (My friends have been trying to convince me for years.) Since then I’ve purchased 4 iPhones, 2 computers, several routers, and miscellaneous other items. Unfortunately, I’m really starting to have a philosophical issue with your company. It appears that more and more Apple is determining for it’s consumers what content they should be able to receive. For instance, the blocking of Mark Fiore’s comic app (due to being political satire) or blocking of what Apple considers to be porn.

I’m all for keeping porn out of kids hands. Heck – I’m all for ensuring that I don’t have to see it unless I want to. But… that’s what parental controls are for. Put these types of apps into categories and allow them to be blocked by their parents should they want to.

Apple’s role isn’t moral police – Apple’s role is to design and produce really cool gadgets that do what the consumer wants them to do.

Thanks for listening

-Matthew

Steve Jobs replied:

Fiore’s app will be in the store shortly. That was a mistake. However, we do believe we have a moral responsibility to keep porn off the iPhone. Folks who want porn can buy and Android phone.

Jobs' response was mostly a reiteration of what he said at the end of the iPhone OS 4.0 reveal during a Q&A session:

You know, there’s a porn store for Android. You can download nothing but porn. You can download porn, your kids can download porn. That’s a place we don’t want to go – so we’re not going to go there.

Read more at TechCrunch.