Opinion: Oh, baby, is Apple sorry about this

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For reasons not quite clear, I get a lot of emails from the Sarah Jane Brain Foundation, a group that tries to raise awareness about shaken-baby syndrome, but none of them has been laced with the boldface-type fury of the one that came in today over a new Apple iPhone application. Called ‘Baby Shaker,’ it presented images of a crying baby; the idea is to shake the iPhone until the baby’s eyes turn to Xs.

Even if it weren’t laden with potential to offend large numbers of people, it’s hard to imagine this as an engaging activity. In any case, the foundation says it complained right away but Baby Shaker remained in the App Store. Now, though, it seems to have been taken down.

I suspect many of us can live happily with that decision. But is it true, as the brain foundation claims, that Baby Shaker actually encouraged the shaking of real babies? That users wouldn’t be able to tell the difference between a little black tech box and the fragile neck of an easily injured child? I guess anything is possible among people who would actually be amused by such an app.