Unlike rival Android, owned by Google, Apple’s operating system for the iPhone and iPad is a closed platform on which every app must be approved by the company.
Apple’s developer guidelines prohibit obscene, pornographic, offensive or defamatory apps that “in Apple’s reasonable judgment may be found objectionable by iPhone users.”
Free speech and digital rights advocates, including San Francisco-based Electronic Frontier Foundation, rail against these red lines and call on Apple to “give up the keys” to its walled garden, but Apple refuses to budge.
Because apps are typically rejected before hitting the market, it’s difficult to determine how many apps have been banned. Here are five apps with religious themes that Apple has rejected or pulled from the iTunes store:
Sassy Wire 