CUPERTINO, Calif.—Apple hates porn. Steve Jobs hates porn. Oh, really? Maybe the truth we have been loathe to acknowledge is that porn-hating Apple is a hobgoblin of our imaginations, a sweet marketing ploy by the company who does marketing ploys like nobody’s business. Maybe Apple only hates porn ‘on deck,’ but as far as porn surfing goes, they’re totally on board.
The latest move by Apple in support of that radical theory is the addition of the so-called “porn mode” to mobile Safari in iOS 5. Otherwise known as "private browsing," neither the concept nor its application is new to cyberspace—Chrome, Internet Explorer and Firefox all offer it in their regular browsers, and Firefox just unveiled it in its 5.0 Android mobile browser—but for Apple its an addition made in geek sex heaven.
“It allows you to surf the web without saving or caching any data on your device. In other words, once you exit the browser there’s no way for anyone to see what sites you’ve visited or what files you may have downloaded,” wrote Brad Linder on mobiputing.com.
“Finally: your id’s shameful lusts are now kept secret between you, Mobile Safari, the internet’s constabulary of pornographers, their advertisers, and the various wholesome Russian individuals they are selling your data to,” enthused Cult of Mac’s John Brownlee, who added for good measure, “Hooray!”
That would be our reaction, too.
