Well, at least it took longer than push notification or turn-by-turn navigation, right?

As should be no surprise, given how the porn industry is typically among the first to adapt to new technologies, Macenstein reports that the first app to feature nudity has made it into the iTunes App Store.

The app is rated 17+ for frequent/intense sexual content or nudity, and frequent/intense mature/suggestive theme. This means the new Settings > General > Restrictions > feature for parental controls in iPhone 3.0 can be used to globally allow or block the app (or any app based on several age-based levels). MacRumors explains the results:

If an App falls outside of the allowed rating they will simply disappear off your home screen. Once you turn the restrictions off again, the affected apps reappear.

This should mean we don’t see any more app rejections for search-based language or content, but it also leads us to wonder how long it will be before we see major adult entertainment companies come knocking on the App Store door…

With all of the rejections in the App Store going on as of late it’s about time we have some good news for our pal Trent Reznor – see link above – and all of the developers out there.

It seems that Apple has rejected a newspaper reading app, Newspaper(s) [iTunes Link], for containing objectionable content. This app contains newspapers from around the world and one of them has a picture of a topless woman. Apple, however, let the developer know in it’s rejection email that Parental Controls have been announced for iPhone OS 3.0 and that it “would be appropriate to resubmit your application for review once this feature is available.”

So there you have it folks. Will these new parental control features (see them in our iPhone 3.0 Walkthrough) help cut down on rejected apps or will we still see these types of rejections take place? Sound off in the comments!

[Via iLounge]

Jeremy recently whipped up an iPhone 101 how to on using Restrictions to set some parental controls, and we’ve had a peek at what Apple already surfaced in previous iPhone 3.0 betas, but now it looks like Beta 3 gets a tad more granular with an extra option:

• In App Purchase

Along with Installing Apps, you can selectively disable the ability for you, or someone you parentally control, from impulse buying those extra game levels or custom sound systems and super-weapons.

Likely a Good Thing.

Newsflash: There’s porn on the internet. The iPhone brings you just the internet. Now, with tortoise-like speed, the rocket scientists over at Time seem to have put 1 and 1 together and come up with ZOMGiPR0nZ!!11 Mobile erotica. The pornet in your pocket. Seems people are even — gasp! — Googletubing for it!

Now, I don’t want to get off on a rant here, because, frankly, I’m not a sociologist, and I can’t tell you if North American faux-puritanism, divided by ultra-conservatives perpetually getting their hands caught in the proverbial cookie jar, multiplied by institutionalized madonna/whore complexes, all equals a continental multiple-personality disorder so confusing it makes the average episode of Lost seem like a linear 1970s serial drama.

How so? Read on while I rant on… after the break.

What I can tell you, without being an economist either, is that there’s a boatload of money to made in pornography — both defending and decrying it. (And often both, as Captain Family may well spend the day fund-raising a righteous protest only to rush home at night, whip out the credit card, and get his Gonzo on).

And I can certainly say, without being a porntrepreneur, that the first racy code was likely programmed for Apple’s revolutionary internet device somewhere between Steve Jobs saying i and Phone on the Macworld stage way back in 2007. And by a 13 year old no less. In between breaking Blu-Ray encryptions. For porn.

So is this, as doubtlessly many pundits will claim, a reason to panic?

No. It’s just another in a long list of reasons to parent.

Of course the internet has content — pornographic, violent, cruel, hateful, duplicitous and otherwise — that is utterly inappropriate for children (and it doesn’t take the Dali Lama to argue a lot of adults would be better off unexperiencing them as well). The world is a dark dangerous place, online and off. It’s a parent’s job to keep their kids out of the alleys, and off the hitch-hiking, and away from the saber-tooth tigers, and no where near the internet pr0n.

Unfortunately, that means getting daddy off his Xbox and mommy off her RAZR long enough to remember they have a kid buried somewhere under all the techno-babysitters money can unfortunately buy. (Hey, TiVo-to-go up some 50s sitcoms sometime for a refresher on what it looks like to have more than one family member stationary in the same room).

And if they do, Apple offers all sorts of parental controls for their iPhone. For the Mobile Safari browser. For the iTunes store. For content ratings. And what about the argument that poor, addle brained parents who can’t even program their TiVo’s might not know how to activate parental controls on their child’s iPhone? Apple even provides a parental control simple enough for them — don’t buy an iPhone for your child.

(And while you’re at it, put their computer in the living room, walk up behind them at random intervals, and don’t let them out of a Linux Live CD sandbox. I don’t need little Jimmy’s XP becoming spambot #876,762,912,662, b’okay daddy Luddite?)

Now excuse me while I go lock you out of, and myself into, the mother load of haptic hedonism…

That’s the rant, and I am out of here…

Read

Engadget honcho Ryan Block got his techie mitts on a pre-release version of the iPhone 2.0 firmware, and here are the highlights (and lowlights!):

Exchange over Wi-Fi is not instantaneous (!). No contact search he could find. New button in Calendar don’t do nothing for him yet. App Store error’s out. Cisco branded VPN screen. Parental controls are good-to-go. Wi-Fi order can be specified in prefs. Calc has new widescreen scientific mode and icon. And his favorite new feature — Multi-Select in Mail!

Head on over for a full rundown and gallery o’ pics!

Apple pre-announces new iPhone firmware. Apple releases new fimware beta. New firmware beta leaks to pirates (JAR!). It’s a familiar story (except for the Apple pre-announcing twist — that almost never happens), and this time brings us details on the upcoming “Parental Controls” feature. (Apple Insider via iPhoneDevTeam)

A General Preference pane, iPhone’s Parental Controls can be enabled or disabled, with individual options for allowing/disallowing “explicit” iPod content, and/or use of Safari, YouTube, iTunes Wi-Fi Music Store, and App Store.

Of course, since iPhoneDevTeam probably has several l33t hax0r members around the age of 10, figure the next-gen jailbreak/unlock will also remove any such parental oversight (FTW!).