The App Store may not allow you to distribute porn inside your app, but there certainly are a lot of apps that cater to porn: "private media managers" and "private browsers" and the like. My own Stash Pro app - http://stash.hedonicsoftware.com/ - combines those two categories and is the #25 top-grossing Utilities app on the iPad (it's now universal and so available on the iPhone/iPod touch as well). Some of that popularity is for people who want a general media manager: the built-in Photos app relies on syncing with your PC to organize, while with Stash you can create album hierarchies, smart albums, etc right on the device. But a large percentage of the audience is certainly using it for porn. Apple has even featured new releases in the "New & Notable" area of iTunes before, so while they don't allow you to come right out and say you're peddling porn, they may not be as prude as people think.

Why the hell was I modded "troll"? Because I dared to mention an app I created to show that, you know, I actually have some relevant experience? Or because I criticized Android development? I've noticed lately that the Android fans are even more rabid than the iPhone ones.

Many people on this thread have a very skewed picture of iOS development. I have released three fairly large iOS projects (i.e. months to years of development rather than a few days or weeks like so many toy apps). The first was a smashing success and our 3-person development company was acquired for it. The acquiring company is now my employer so I won't name specifics in this case. The second was an independent iPhone app I wrote that was a total flop. The third is my new independent iPad project called Stash that's doing pretty well so far: http://stash.hedonicsoftware.com/

Just the existence of Stash on the App Store - basically an app for porn, though it doesn't provide the explicit content - is evidence that Apple isn't nearly as draconian and capricious as many in this thread are portraying them to be. If you create a high-quality app (or hell, even a low-quality one so long as it doesn't crash) that follows their general guidelines and doesn't try to take over basic functions of the iPhone, you won't generally have a problem. Sure, there are famous counter-examples, and I really feel for those developers. I can't imagine a more frustrating experience then pouring your time into something that's rejected outright. But it doesn't change the fact that these are the few exceptions in a vast sea of approvals or justified rejections (based on the three points that Jobs outlined). Moreover, in my experience Apple is getting much better about working with developers to get apps their approved. It's still a slow process - the last release of Stash was delayed without feedback for over 2 weeks, which felt interminable - but they eventually call and tell you about any solvable issues and give you a chance to correct them.

I'd also like to point out that outside the pain of dealing with the review process, iOS development is a lot of fun. Someone on this thread said no one is in the App Store simply for the love of programming, but I strongly disagree. Apple provides some really nice APIs, and it's relatively easy to create something that looks and feels smooth and professional. I'm currently working on an Android project for my employer, and it's a real chore compared to iOS dev. I don't care how "open" the market is or even how powerful the SDK is if I hate coding for it and need a graphic design team to make it look decent. People forget that Apple/NeXT has been in the GUI framework business for a long time. They know what they're doing. They also seem to be good at letting their internal APIs fully bake before including them in the SDK, which results in a much higher signal-to-noise ratio than in Android, where everything feels over-engineered. I recently read an article by another iOS developer that sums up my feelings pretty much exactly: http://iphonedevelopment.blogspot.com/2010/03/android-sdk-from-iphone-developer.html

That's my 2 cents. YMMV. But if you're interested in mobile development at all, you owe it to yourself to give iOS development a shot.

I keep up with modern theories about the universe and its beginnings. I read your summary of the videos in another post (who has time to watch 2.5 hours of lectures?), and it contained nothing I didn't already know, and absolutely nothing that supports the biblical creation account. Is the fact that the universe may have arisen from a fluctuation in the negative vacuum energy -- basically creating itself from nothing -- cool? Absolutely. Does it lend any support whatsoever to the biblical creation account? Hell no.

First of all, just about every religion I've ever heard of, both modern and primitive, has a creation story. So the fact that the universe was created ex nihilo can't be said to be evidence of the biblical creation account in particular -- such a general fact would be equal evidence for every other creation account known, and therefore supports none of them.

Next, the biblical creation account is wrong in just about every detail, as already mentioned. How you can ignore all that but see a divine hand in the fact that the ancients called a 50/50 bet -- infinitely old universe vs. finite age universe -- correctly is utterly beyond me. (In fact, I don't even think it was a 50/50 bet for them -- I don't think they could imagine an infinitely old universe, so it was pretty much a given to them that it was created just a short time ago.) It's cherry picking at its worst. My previous post summed it up as best I can, so I'll just copy it here:

Anyone can take any mythical creation story with sufficiently general or vague creative steps (in this case, days) and make it seem predictive a-posteriori, in the same way the bible codes or Nostradamus are predictive a-posteriori. Until you can answer for the glaring errors in the creation account or show me where it has taught us anything of value about the actual nature of the world, it's all a bunch of hand waving. I have no problem with people believing without evidence (so long as they don't make public policy based on their faith), but I hate when people misconstrue the evidence we do have to try to make it back up their fairy tales.