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  • Cosmo Releases Sex Position of the Day App For Android, I Release Bile

    John Biggs

    Biggs is the East Coast Editor of TechCrunch. Biggs has written for the New York Times, InSync, USA Weekend, Popular Mechanics, Popular Science, Money and a number of other outlets on technology and wristwatches. He is the former editor-in-chief of Gizmodo.com and lives in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn. You can Tweet him here and G+ him here. Email him directly at... → Learn More

    Thursday, August 19th, 2010


    Do you like sex with other people? Do you like Android? While it is my opinion that those two questions are mutually exclusive, someone, somewhere matches those two criteria. Thankfully, Cosmopolitan Magazine is there for them.

    Basically, this is an app that shows sex positions, albeit in a cartoony way. Fair enough. Android is for pornographers, after all. And that’s basically the news, but I’d like to inject a little outrage into this otherwise mundane story.

    First, let’s get the throat clearing out of the way. The app features:

    - The Carnal Challenge Rating: the more flames a position displays, the greater the difficulty

    - Erotic Instructions: hints to help you make the most of the position and what to look forward to

    - Colorful Illustration: tasteful visuals that help you understand how the position works

    Something so disgusting wouldn’t be available for iOS, would it? Right?

    Wrong. It’s also available for the iPhone. Tasteful visuals. Ahem. Carnal Challenge? Erotic Descriptions? Sounds like porn to me. Now, if you’ll allow me, I’d like to blow up.

    Android and sexytime I can understand. It’s an OS for the perverse and obscurely fetished, after all. But what the heck is going on here? If you’re Cosmopolitan magazine you can talk about making the nasty on the iPhone but if you’re some weirdo who wants to make a boob jiggling app for the iPhone you can’t? After all, the procreative act – heck, any bodily act – is incompatible with the iTunes Store mission, right?

    I wouldn’t be so sure. Apparently Philip Shoemaker, director of applications technology at Apple, the man in charge of selecting apps for inclusion into the app store, is in fact the proud programmer of Graynoodle’s iWiz app, an application that allows you to simulate micturition. He also makes a number of fart apps and had these apps approved a few weeks after starting at the company. Basically if you’re on the inside, the approval process doesn’t apply to you.

    Also, and sex app makers take note, if you’re a major woman’s magazine published by one of the biggest publishing houses in the world, you also get a pass. This actually fits into my worldview that the iTunes Store is like Disneyland: you can have adult beverages in the park, as long as its on Disney’s terms and at Disney’s prices. They don’t want you to come in roaring drunk and high on ether simply because it prevents them from selling you the ether.

    You can’t have it both ways. Either sex is bad or sex is good. After all, think of the children. Cosmo shouldn’t get a get out of jail card because they’re a major publication and Shoemaker shouldn’t get a pass because, well, he works for Apple and controls the app approval process. All we are saying is give iOS sex apps a chance.

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