Ty Colfax at G4TV has an interview up with Persuasive Games founding partner Ian Bogost who documents the agony of getting his iPhone game, Jetset: A Game for Airports, through Apple's approvals process.
"Their first gripe was about what they claimed was offensive sexual content in the game, which amounted to a couple things that we had included based on these stories.
"There was this guy in Chicago a couple years ago, who had this penis pump that he was trying to take in a carry on. Someone asked him what it was, and they thought he said it was a bomb, or he was joking and he said it was a bomb. And there was this kind of international story about this whole thing because it was funny but also it really highlighted the kind of embarrassment of having a personal item exposed to the world. And so that was one that they were uncomfortable with.
"We had also included a woman’s underwire bra, because there’s just a whole mess of stories about the underwire in women’s brassieres setting off certain metal detectors when their sensitivity is raised. And this has led to actually quite a large number of complaints about, you know, inappropriate groping by agents. So these are two items that Apple found offensive I guess."
I wonder if Bogost lectures on the topic at the Georgia Institute of Technology. Now that's a class I'd love to take.
The Making of an iPhone Game & Things That Make Apple Uncomfortable