SlingPlayer Mobile Rating Screenshot
SlingPlayer Mobile App Store Screenshot

After excitedly unwrapping a Slingbox SOLO this holiday season, I decided to have a look at the SlingPlayer Mobile iPhone app. As you might expect, the app lets you watch your SlingBox content on Apple touch devices.

Much has been made of the steep price ($30!) and the fact that AT&T crippled the software by making it WiFi only, but it was the rating for the app on the iTunes Store that caught my eye.

A rating of 12+ seems ludicrous because it takes into account what people could watch while using the app as opposed to what was coded into the app.

I thought it was ridiculous enough to force dictionary apps to censor swear words and stopping the Dragon Dictation app from recognizing the same, but pretending that obscene and grotesque material is not far easier to access with Mobile Safari is both laughable and unfair.

Labeling an app as having “Mild Profanity or Crude Humor” is misleading unless the app makes a fart sound between view transitions. I could use the app to watch televised mass or a non-stop porn loop and in either case the app is merely presenting content to which I requested access.

It is likewise unfair of me to pretend that this righteous indignation is enough to get me to stop using or loving my iPhone. I was visibly distraught when my iPhone wouldn’t turn on last Christmas morning and the following day and a half felt very disconnected indeed.

ppk, a foremost authority on all things JavaScript, has advocated web apps as an alternative to Apple’s tyranny. I must agree that stuff like this makes me want to take a closer look at HTML 5.