The rise and fall of the iPhone peep show
"Sex is everywhere these days," we wrote in an article that nearly ended our career 14 years ago. "There's something about the combination of sex and computers, however, that seems to make otherwise worldly-wise adults a little crazy."
How else to explain the fuss that got made this week over an application called Hottest Girls that enjoyed a brief moment of notoriety — and an even briefer run as one of the hottest entries in the iTunes App Store.
In case you missed it, the story started late Wednesday night when sharp-eyed Apple watchers at Macenstein reported that the $1.99 app, which until that day had served up mostly photographs of young Asian women in lingerie, had changed its format and gone topless.
"And then there was porn," wrote Dr. Macenstein in a post illustrated by a heavily Bowdlerized screengrab of what looked like outtakes from a Sports Illustrated bikini issue. He described the unveiling of the first iPhone app with nudity as "an announcement rivaling the first transmissions from the moon landing in importance."
Never mind that photos like this would hardly turn a head on the magazine racks of Paris — or, for that matter, your average American truck stop — this story had more than bare breasts. It had legs.
