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Apr 23, 2009 05:08 PM | 11
A message on Sikalosoft.com today reads, "Okay, so maybe the Baby Shaker iPhone app was a bad idea." The makers of this Apple iPhone software program—sold briefly through Apple's App Store Web site beginning Monday, before the company yanked it on Wednesday—have a way with understatement.
Evan as Apple lit up an otherwise sullen market yesterday by announcing record financials for its fiscal 2009 second quarter (including a $1.2 billion profit), the company was wiping egg off of its face for somehow allowing Baby Shaker to be offered via its site. The app encourages players to shake their handheld devices in order to silence the incessant crying of an infant. The game features the black-and-white line drawings of a baby as well as the following description: "See how long you can endure his or her adorable cries before you just have to find a way to quiet the baby down!" the Associated Press reports. Once the player finishes shaking the device, the on-screen baby is depicted with large red X's over its eyes.
The game, developed by Sikalosoft (which also wrote the "Dice Mosaic" App Store program that converts digital photos into black and white mosaics), sparked outrage, particularly from the New York City-based Sarah Jane Brain Foundation and National Shaken Baby Coalition, based in Edwardsville, Ill. Patrick Donohue, the Sarah Jane Brain Foundation's founder said in a statement, "You have no idea the number of children your actions have put at risk by your careless, thoughtless and reckless behavior! We will do everything we can to expose your reckless actions and reverse the horrific impact it will have on the innocent children throughout the United States."
Apple's App Store is a mixed bag, with items ranging from software that allows the iPhone to produce soothing ocarina music to apps that let the iPhone simulate the sounds of flatulence. The company's criteria for approving or rejecting software submitted by independent developers for sale via the App Store is at best inconsistent, according to TheAppleBlog.com (published by the GigaOM network). "Depending on who's looking at your app, and on what day," the blog points out, "you may garner a rejection when on any other day, you’d slip through unnoticed."
Image of Apple's New York City store © Anne Jan Roeleveld via Flickr
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Apple,
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11 Comments
Add CommentIn poor taste? YES!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisbut: "You have no idea the number of children your actions have put at risk by your careless, thoughtless and reckless behavior!"
I think that is a bit of overstatement and a sad state of PCedness in our society. I find it unrealistic at best and f'ing absurd at worst to claim that making this game will compel someone to shake a real baby.
Hi!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThis is not really PC, it's the truth. Young people, especially boys in our culture, often have little knowledge of how fragile babies are. The papers are full of stories of "stepfathers" with little impulse control shaking and throwing infants in their frustration at the child's crying. This phone "game" creates the neural pathways that snap into place when a frustrating event occurs and the reaction can be deadly.
Surely there are other frameworks upon which a phone game can be based.
It's interesting - only in a closed ecosystem like the app store would the company offering the app (Apple) be held responsible for something like this, and only in that situation could something like this be yanked. The internet is full of tasteless stuff, but absent government censorship, it's not going anywhere.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"... This phone "game" creates the neural pathways that snap into place when a frustrating event occurs ..."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisCan I presume that there is evidence which can be provided to substantiate this claim?
Tasteless, sure. But I think these foundations have missed a real opportunity to bring the issue to light, and to educated the public. (They could have even possilbly worked with the creators to this end.) According to the article, the game baby dies as a result. Young people (future parents) will see and understand what that means; you shake a baby, you hurt it. It's the most basic cause and effect lesson I can imagine. It's an immature laugh, and an instant life long lesson. I don't see any habits forming that could leap from cell phone to baby, especially since the game will just be turned off when it actually stops being entertaining.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisJanO, your claim is extrapolating data from somewhere else and subjectively attaching this game to it through your own "neural pathways" and emotion. I am sorry that you view the human psyche as such a weak and fragile thing that the mere suggestion that shaking a baby is fun in a video game will lead BOYS to do it to their own baby.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe Internet has tons of tasteless stuff like this, it's true. However, it's one thing to pull it off the net and quite another to see it officially endorsed by a trusted large-scale corporation. That's really the keystone of the issue at hand.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisPeople should quit whining. This is a great educational tool.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt teaches people that if you shake your baby it's going to die!
The outrage that people are crying about here is laughable.
Keep in mind that people are the reason why McDonald's lost millions for not putting warnings on its coffee cups.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisPeople are the reason the 'accident' lawsuit industry is lucrative.
People are not going to learn anything from this. Ever.
I agree with the poster about mcdonalds. If people are so mind numbingly dumb in america that they burn themselves with coffee and then sue the coffee maker for making the coffee hot, then they probably will kill a child after using this app. But yeah, if it were on the net and not provided through apple's service, there'd be an outcry of PCers but no one else would notice. This one got notice because it's in a mainstream service.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI was about ready to post this exact point then saw it has already been made by Joeb. Here it is again because I think it's a very good point and it shouldn't be missed.......
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"Tasteless, sure. But I think these foundations have missed a real opportunity to bring the issue to light, and to educated the public. (They could have even possilbly worked with the creators to this end.) According to the article, the game baby dies as a result. Young people (future parents) will see and understand what that means; you shake a baby, you hurt it. It's the most basic cause and effect lesson I can imagine. It's an immature laugh, and an instant life long lesson. I don't see any habits forming that could leap from cell phone to baby, especially since the game will just be turned off when it actually stops being entertaining."