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.

MiKandi co-founders Jesse Adams and Jen McEwen are on the sidelines watching the Apple vs. Microsoft fight, but there is something to be said for their collected attitude about the whole thing. Unlike Apple, MiKandi knows that a store is more than its name. It’s what it offers. Their philosophy colored a recent interview with GeekWire, providing a breath of fresh air in an otherwise restrictive and oppressive marketplace.

“Companies need to learn to treat customers as adults, and not restrict them out of fear of upsetting another group,” McEwen told GeekWire. “That’s the approach we like to take with customers. We want to treat you as adults.”

Invariably, this lead to the discussion of an open operating system versus a closed one.

“The great thing about Android is that even if Amazon doesn’t want to sell adult content, the Android Marketplace doesn’t want to sell it, at least the platform allows third-party stores to sell more adult experiences,” Adams added. “That’s the big difference. Your phone is very personal. It’s going to be the way most adults connect to the world, over any other device very soon. Even if the other app stores start to offer it, developers really choose app stores as partners, not just as an app store operator. There’s other things they’re looking for more than just being able to sell adult content — partners that will promote and market the apps, and not just treat it as a back alleyway store like adult novelty shops were for a very long time.”

It’s MiKandi’s philosophy and commitment to users and developers that make it worth supporting, even if you don’t have an Android or desire adult apps.

Via Gizmodo.

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.

Face it, the porn industry has been at the forefront of technology for ages, using it to proliferate and propel itself into society the way any good parasite would. And like a good parasite, porn has a way of changing to get around any new defenses on the part of the host.

Enter the Fleshdrive, a four ($39.95), eight ($69.95) and 16 gigabyte ($119.95) USB drive to store your entire porn library comfortably in your pocket. Don’t have a porn library? The Fleshdrive comes with the porn, natch!

Previously compatible with Mac, PC, Xbox, Playstation and media players with USB ports, now also allows you to enjoy your porn without any web-browsing right on your iPad, with no risk of viruses or a pesky trail on the device browsing history.

All you need is the iPad Camera Connection Kit ($29). Plug the Fleshdrive into it and voila — you can convert and download the files into your iPad to watch your porn whenever you like, no internet connection necessary. Which basically means no buffering, spyware, pop ups, spam — just you and hours of glorious fucking.

Try to pwn that, Steve.

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.

They report this seems to have occurred overnight. Analysts with whom they spoke told the paper, “Book chart analysts said it was unlikely that all the erotic titles could have dropped out of the list at the same moment without being deliberately removed.”

Apple, of course, declined to comment. Chad Catacchio at Next Web writes:

Let’s for a second say that Apple is intentionally removing them from either the charts and/or altogether (which we’re not saying it is doing either, but just for argument’s sake): this could become a very large issue. Aside from outright censoring of books (which is what this would be) what would it mean for other ebook apps on iOS devices? Does Apple plan to ban the Kindle app because of the kinds of books it sells? And if it doesn’t, why wouldn’t consumers just buy their erotic novellas from Amazon instead, skipping iBooks all together?

While we’re not 100 percent sure this is what occurred here, the fact that we suspect Apple of this is enough. We cannot trust that company to let us make our own decisions when it comes to sex. They have regulated what’s appropriate before and it’s ridiculous to think this will change any time soon.

Think about that next time you buy one of their products, iSheep. If you think hype and “slick design” is worth your freedom, you don’t deserve that freedom.

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.

Jobs’ response?

Yeah. That’s what he said.

Via Engadget.

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.

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.

Image from MapData. Information from Gizmodo.

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.