SEX, BOMBS & BURGERS

Ha! That's all I had to say when I read the news over the weekend about how Phillip Shoemaker, the head of Apple's app store, was busted by bloggers over at Valleywag for following a whole ton of porn stars and escorts on Twitter.

I've posted before about Apple's hypocritical position when it comes to pornography. CEO Steve Jobs, of course, has declared that his products give you "freedom from porn" by not allowing "adult" or "sexy" apps into Apple's app store. Of course, we know that's bull-cocky because if anything, Apple's products have allowed porn to spread like few other gadgets have.

It's very ironic, as Valleywag , that Shoemaker was following so many porn stars and escorts on Twitter's microblogging service. It's pretty funny that the guy in charge of keeping iPhones and iPads "free from porn" seems to be such a big fan of it. The article does suggest he may have had his account set up to automatically follow back anyone who followed him, but it went on to add that this was unlikely given that he had a long run - or a "spree" - of adding escorts, indicating that he followed them manually... er, voluntarily.

Could he have been following them for "research" purposes? Perhaps - after all, I follow a number of porn stars, although I can say factually that it is for research. But if that were the case, why did he delete his Twitter account shortly after Wired magazine started asking him questions about it? Seems very fishy.

And what's with the names of Apple executives anyway? First there was Mark Papermaster, who recently left his job as vice-president of devices hardware engineering, and now there's Phillip Shoemaker. I guess if I ever want a job at Apple, I'm going to have to change my name to something like Peter Pencilemperor or Peter Pumpkineater.