Apple's 'Baby Shaker' Application Shocks iPhone Users

Posted by Isaac Fitzgerald, AlterNet at 11:43 AM on May 8, 2009.

A lot of my friends have iPhones, and I'm not afraid to admit that I am jealous of them. My cellphone is falling apart. The screen is half broken and it only works when plugged into a wall. You'd think that would be an excuse for me to purchase my own iPhone but, because of my inability to not drop, step-on, kick, or submerge expensive things (especially electronic ones), I don't trust myself to own something that costs half-a-month's rent and can easily fall in the toilet. That doesn't stop me from acting like a child every time a friend takes out their spaceship-slick iPhone though. Seriously. I get grabby.

The iPhone is awesome in so many ways, but the main reason I love them (aside from the fact that they look like the future) are the applications. Apps are brilliant little programs that iPhone users can download for $0.99 a piece. The top downloaded apps from Apple are as follows:

I don't know what any of those apps do, but don't they sound fun? I wish I was playing "Stick Wars" right now.

Apps are a big business for Apple, with over 35,000 applications on their site and over 1 billion downloads in just nine months (remember, $0.99 a download). The best part? Anyone with some programming skills can design their own app and submit it to Apple. Once Apple approves the app they'll sell it on their website, passing on 50% of the sales to the designer. So if you create an app that gets downloaded 100,000 times you'd make around $50,000. Something so lucrative can never be wrong.

Until it is.

Last weekend, my friend was showing me the latest app he downloaded, the shotgun app, and I was reveling in its radness. Every time he shook his iPhone up and down once it would produce that cool, crisp, sliding sound of a loading shotgun: "chk-chk." Then my friend would point it at me and quickly jerk his hand: "boom!" While I faked being shot I couldn't help but think that if I had a real shotgun I would probably steal my friend's iPhone.

"Little violent," another friend said.

"That's nothing," said my buddy as he reloaded his e-shotgun, "did you hear about the baby shaker app?"

We stared in silence.

"You know, the one where the baby's crying and you shake it until it dies?"

I almost made a "hold the phone" pun but thought better of it.

My friend didn't have the app (which bodes well for his soul) but, using his iPhone (of course), he quickly found a video of it on YouTube:

My friend told us that Apple had removed the app from their site after receiving some very harsh criticism:

Patrick Donohue, founder of the Sarah Jane Brain Foundation, a New York-based group which tries to widen understanding about pediatric brain injuries, took Apple to task in a letter to Steve Jobs and other executives, saying: "As the father of a three-year-old who was shaken by her baby nurse when she was only five days old, breaking three ribs, both collarbones and causing a severe brain injury, words cannot describe my reaction."

Marilyn Bar, a board member of the Sarah Jane Brain Foundation and also founder of the US Center for Shaken Baby Syndrome, said in a statement: "Not only are they making fun of shaken baby syndrome, but they are actually encouraging it. This is absolutely terrible."

While I do not believe that violence in video games encourages violence in real life, even I found the app distasteful, and am glad to hear that Apple took it down.

At the end of the day though, this doesn’t stop me from coveting my friend’s futuristic communication devices. While the baby shaker app was a huge mistake on Apple’s part, it doesn’t change the fact that they have over 35,000 other apps which are much more tasteful (ok, not all of them, apparently there’s an app which "lets you jiggle a woman jogger's breasts"). People will entertain themselves with what they will, we’ve just got to hope that more people enjoy the lightsaber app (so cool) than the stupid boob jiggling one. In fact, I'm going to try and come up with my own right now. Maybe, if I think of a cool enough app (one that doesn’t involve infanticide or objectifying women) I could take my earnings and buy myself an iPhone.

Tagged as: apple, iphone, baby shaker, baby shaker app, apps, app, applications