Forbidden Fruit: Apple's 10 Dumbest App Bans (None of Which Involve Porn)

Apple (AAPL) may be easing up on its ban of sexual content in apps for iPhone and iPad as long as they're aimed at women and not men, Adweek reports. Thus Cosmopolitan's Sex Position of the Day has been given the green light but honest-to-goodness porn remains banned.

Google (GOOG)'s Android Market for apps, by contrast, can be an eye-popping experience, turning the phrase "There's an app for that" into an exclamatory question of disbelief.

Apple CEO Steve Jobs famously believes his products offer the world "freedom from porn," so Apple continues to review and censor every app that applies for access to its users, leading to some bizarre and contradictory results.

Here are 10 things banned (either temporarily or permanently) by Apple, none of which have anything to do with porn:

1. Stern magazine and Bild newspaper: Mainstream German publications that have different standards for editorial content. Apple's dispute with the publishers revolved around an issue that only a geek could love: Whether nipples can be seen in a PDF version of the publication.
2. Simply Beach: This swimwear shopping app was caught up in a sweep of adult content in the app store, even though it's not a cheesecake app. It's an apparel retail app for women.
3. Ulysses by James Joyce, the comic: It contained a scene in which Buck Mulligan takes a swim naked. The panel in question showed off Mulligan's, er, Irish charm.
4. Alien Buffet: A brainless shoot-'em-up game in which the user controls Daisy Mae, a fighter who likes short-shorts.
5. The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde, the comic: Apple demanded that the scenes in which men kissed be blacked out.
6. Cartoons about Tiger Woods: The comics criticized the nation's best golfer. Can't think why ...
7. Dazed & Confused magazine: The fashion/culture publication's staff prepared what they referred to as an "Iran" edition of the magazine, stripped of nudity and risque material.
8. Gay sightseeing app: The publisher suggested some sleazy bars for men to visit. An image of a man standing on a bartop in a banana hammock was too much for Cupertino.
9. Mark Fiore: The Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist dared to make fun of politicians.
10. Cellphone radiation detector: Tawkon is an app that purports to measure the amount of radiation coming from your iPhone. Why would Apple not want you to know about that? Hmmm.

• 4 Reasons the FTC Won't Find Apple's iAd Anti-Competitive
• Think Before You Hit "Send": Apple Ads Sabotaged Over Steve Jobs' "Freedom From Porn" Email
• Separated at Birth? Ads for iPad and Failed '90s PDA Newton Draw From the Same Well
• Why Apples $1M iAd Price Tag Will Come Back to Bite It Down the Road
• Apple's iAd Platform: A Big Bet Against the Open Web