According to those behind sex positions app iKamasutra, however, Apple is increasingly guilty of wrongly applying its own regulations.
Developer Nbite has taken to its blog to describe the battle it's had attempting to keep its successful iKamasutra app on Apple's platform. After 13 million downloads and several years on the marketplace, Apple pulled it from the App Store.
Naturally, the studio was eager to find out why and, after haranguing Apple via every means possible, the problem seemed to focus on a change to some of the app's illustrations.
Blondes have more fun
"The app was removed because the icon was too explicit and the illustrations had too much detail, specifically brown hair colour and facial details," details the developer on its blog.
"That seemed like a minor bump in the road, and I agreed to change them both quickly."
Edits to both the images and icons were made, but still the app was barred from sale, with Apple eventually responding a month after the app was original verions had been pulled with a fresh reason.
It appears Apple either considered iKamasutra a 'clone', or a low quality spam app.
The irony is, one of the remaining kamasutra apps was quick to move into the space, emulating iKamasutra's name and icon (see below) in cynical fashion. It's a breach that, to date, remains unchallenged by Apple.
"Apple has always held itself to a higher standard, and honestly I support that," adds the outfit.
"For Apple to allow another developer to just steal and make money off of our users is hard to take, and honestly I don't know what to do about it.
"I want the users of iKamasutra to know that we will do anything to comply with Apple's rules to get the app back in the store and supply them with all the updates we have in the pipeline."
On a Windows winner
To add insult to injury, iKamasutra has also been pulled from Google Play, with Google claiming the app violates the marketplace's policy on sexually explicit material - despite the app having been listed since December 2010.
Google refused to reinstate the app even with updates, and Nbite resorted to republishing it with toned down illustrations, refunding users of the original app manually for any add-ons they'd purchased.
In all, the only marketplaces to leave iKamasutra be are Windows Phone Marketplace and Amazon's Appstore for Android.
"Apple has created a set of guidelines that the iKamasutra team is happy to adhere to," the studio concludes.
"Our problem is not the guidelines, but the mistaken enforcement of them, and the lack of dialogue toward resolving any concerns Apple might have."
[source: iKamasutra.com]
