In their summary of favorites at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES), TechCrunch includes a video of an interview with Suki Durham of OhMiBod. As a means of offering a preemptive apology, they write, “This shouldn’t be here. Sorry, everyone. Watch Jordan interview a dildo company. It’s kind of NSFW.”
What the tech blog doesn’t tell you is that this is the most-watched video from their coverage of the expo.
Last month, Apple took to the courts to begin enforcing its trademark on the name “app store” in hopes of keeping it out of competitors’ hands. They slapped a suit on Amazon’s app store as soon as it opened and are still tangled in a suit with Microsoft that resembles a circus more than a serious intellectual property case, what with all the linguists running about and the endless quibbling about font sizes.
Feeling impotent, no doubt, Apple has since gone after MiKandi, the first-ever adult app store for Android devices. In an effort to avoid costly, interminable lawsuits, the small Seattle-based operation has changed its tagline from “the world’s first adult app store” to “the world’s first adult app market.” We like boutique better, but market does the trick, since Apple’s trademark only applies to this exact combination of otherwise completely generic words. … Continue Reading
You can try to take porn out of the technology, but you can’t take technological pioneers out of the porn industry. Somehow they will always find a way to get around you. The industry is used to barriers. They’ve been getting around them since the first dirty books were banned.
Though Apple’s Steve Jobs has been very vocal about the importance of Apple devices being free of pornography, going as far as to tell users to switch to Android if they have a problem with the liberty he has taken in making himself their parent — an ironic turn considering the Apple 1984 commercial of old. Junior Anti-Sex League, anyone? — there’s nothing he can do about this. … Continue Reading
Frightening speculation via The Next Web this morning, though not entirely unsurprising. Apparently, The Telegraph is reporting that a number of erotic novels have disappeared from the top UK sellers list of iBooks. … Continue Reading
The new iPhone is out! Lines at all Apple stores, like club openings for unfortunate-dressed people. Sadly, the device is apparently having some issues. A lot of users are reporting reception issues. Per Engadget:
So, we just spoke with Apple and got the straight dirt on the reception issues that have been plaguing users today… and it’s a little surprising. In essence, Apple cops to the fact there are reception issues with the new iPhone — namely, that if you cover the bottom-left corner of the phone and bridge the gap between the notch there with your naked flesh, you could see some signal degradation.
Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you’ve heard that Apple banned Pulitzer-winning satirist Mark Fiore from its app store for ridiculing public figures (um, he’s a satirist, like, hello). Apple CEO Steve Jobs has since called the ban a mistake, but he’s not done ruining the fun for everyone.
Last week, TechCrunch published an e-mail from Jobs sent to a consumer asking when Apple became the moral police. Jobs’ response said: “we do believe we have a moral responsibility to keep porn off the iPhone. Folks who want porn can buy and [sic] Android phone.”
Assuming this email is legit, this isn’t the first time Jobs has suggested users try Android if they want porn. Earlier this month, during a Q&A session after the iPhone 4.0 OS event, Jobs said: “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.”
We at Sex and the 405 find it incredibly ironic that Apple is pulling this nonsense. Remember the Apple 1984 commercial? Junior Anti-Sex League, anyone? Who’s Big Brother now?
Bastards.
Image from the Apple 1984 commercial, superimposed on an image of an iPhone screen. Information from TechCrunch.
Text messages. We’re willing to bet that eight times out of 10, these are the reason cheaters get caught — not that we have any experience with this or anything here at Sex and the 405. We never get caught.
Anyway, our dahlias of decadence and depravity, technology is smiling upon us again. Allow us to present to you an app especially suited to the misbehaving sexter (and low-budget spr-sekrit agent): TigerText.
Tiger for Tiger Woods, the professional golfer whose moral downfall was catalyzed by naughty texts? The founders claim the app was named before the debacle. Sure it was.
Interested? The app is free right now, so this is a great time to go snatch it up. Make an account with a username and password using your phone number and specify how much time you want to give texts before they expire.
Lifespan is the length of time a text will exist on the your phone, recipient’s device (whether the text is accessed or not), and the company’s servers.
Turning Delete History ON will remove all history of conversations from your device each time you close the application.
Turning Delete on Read ON will remove the message from the recipient’s phone one minute from the time the text is opened. If the text is unopened by the recipient, the default setting for text lifespan will come into play. In this case, that means the text will be deleted automatically in 15 minutes.
Drawback? The recipient must also install TigerText — fine if you have an iPhone, but versions for BlackBerry and Android are still not available.
Before we begin, we want to take a second to instantaneously orgasm at the realization that we are thisclose to living in a postcyberpunk universe, OMG. The cyborgs are so close, the Sex and the 405 newsroom can almost taste them! Nom nom nom! /geekery
But let’s explore the robots that are actually among us, shall we?
Meet Roxxxy, a 5-foot-7-inches TrueCompanion that outweighs our editrix at 120 pounds. Her skin is soft, her orifices are willing and! She will talk to you about anything that interests you. For as long as you like. Without rolling her eyes!
(Our editrix should send one to her ex-husband.)
A TrucCompanion is a talking sex robot. Priced at $7,000, Roxxxy is the brainchild of Douglas Hines, a mad scientist who thought to slap silicone skin on a computer with voice-recognition and speech-synthesis software, and five pre-programmed personalities ranging from Frigid Farrah to Wild Wendy — take your pick!
A motor in her chest pumps heated air through a tube that winds through Roxxxy’s body, which keeps her warm to the touch. She also has sensors in her hands and genital areas that elicit vocal responses from her when she’s touched. She even shudders to simulate orgasm (like most women you know! Just kissing, sorry).
Her battery-life is only three hours, but then, that’s more than our iPhones, so we’re not going to complain too much.
“There’s a tremendous need for this kind of product,” said Hines, who’s really a computer scientist and former Bell Labs engineer, and happily married in Licoln Park, New Jersey.
This version of the bot cannot move on its own, though it can be contorted into many positions. We’re looking forward to advances in the technology that will allow for Roxxxy to get up and make dinner, give us a back massage, then go service our boyfriends and husbands so we can deal with our deadlines.
And once they figure out all the bugs, we expect her male counterpart, a sexy man-thing to change lightbulbs, play with our hair for hours on end and, of course, do us 24/7 — between deadlines, of course.
It’s not cheating if it doesn’t have a pulse, right?
Ew, that’s gross. Sorry. YOU KNOW WHAT WE MEAN.
Image from TrueCompanion. Information from CNN, via Denise Tanton.
Here’s an excellent argument on the suffering we’re enduring at the hands of anti-porn Apple, by Gizmodo‘s John Herrman:
Apple has a ratings system in the App Store. It has a 17+ rating, for apps with violent, crude or sexual content—or app that have a browser function, which could be used to access objectionable content. Most of the apps above are 17+, which means that if parents so choose, they can block their iPhone-having children from even being able to download them. It follows that they could do the same for 18+ apps, so why haven’t they?
I can understand Apple not wanting to get into the porn business, which, by taking 30% of developers’ revenue, I guess they would sort of be doing. But the current setup just doesn’t make any sense. You can buy an app with a built-in browser, which can access the most horrible smut on the web, and get a 17+ rating. But if you link said app to one of those sites, and disable general browsing, suddenly it’s verboten. Again, I can understand how we ended up here, but the results, as you’ve seen, are depressing.
It’s fair to say that most people just assume there are porn apps, when there really aren’t. But there are hundreds of apps that look like porn apps, cost money, and that are, effectively, bait-and-switch scams. Apple can fix this in two ways: they can open the floodgates and just let people have their real porn apps, which would effectively kill these in-between semi-porn apps, or they can revise how the App Store works: by instituting a 24-hour open return policy for paid apps, like the Android Market has, people would simply return these worthless apps, and developers, now unable to trick people into giving them boner money, would stop making them. They would tumble down the rankings and into oblivion.
Anyway, no matter what Apple does, people will continue to look at photos of naked humans on their iPhones. It may make the company squirm, but there’s no reason to pretend it’s not happening, and to let scammers screw up the App Store more than they already have.
The system is broken, Apple. Please fix it.
As an iPhone user, I can’t tell you how much it bugs me that the Apple doesn’t carry any sexy apps in their store. Yes, we have some web apps to satisfy the cravings, but web seriously limits what developers can do for us. These are fast times! Our porn should be up to speed!
Bastards.
Well, looks like Android just got a one-up over Apple. Introducing the MiKandi App Store, the first marketplace of porn apps, now in beta.
All you need to do to access the porn store on your Android is go to MiKandi.com on your mobile browser. Voilà! Porn at your greedy fingertips. You’ll have to tell me what you think, seeing as I made the gruesome error of choosing the iPhone over the Android and can’t do it myself. #fail
Image from MiKandi. Information from Mashable, via @harrylang.
Keep up with everything we're covering right in your stream. Please note this page is limited to users 18+.