To Shake or Not to Shake

An Application for the iTouch and iPhone was pulled from the App Store yesterday. It was called the “Baby Shaker”. “Baby Shaker” was programed to make the iProduct produce crying noises and display a baby on the face of the device. The user was then expected to shake the device. If the device was shaken hard enough the crying would stop crying and a set of two red X’s would replace its eyes.

That’s right “Baby Shaker” is a an Application that is intended to simulate Shaken Baby Syndrome.

Despite the Application displaying the warning “Never, Never shake a baby” Activist groups are outraged because they feel “Baby Shaker” will teach parents to shake their babies into silence. The Sarah Jane Brain Project is calling for an apology from Steve Jobs for letting the application slip through Apples normally stringent App screening process.

“Baby Shaker” is likely one of the more immature and insensitive programs released into the consumers world. But let’s be honest about this. Is this really News?

At Newgrounds.com a user can search a whole genre of Dead Baby games. These games are without a single doubt disturbing, crude and far below the level of class “Baby Shaker” depicts, but activist groups have not been asking for an apology from the Newgrounds Developers.

At UrbanJokes.com there is a category of jokes about Dead Babies. Activists don’t attck them with zeal and demand to be apoligized to.

The outcry over “Baby Shaker” seems to be less of a legitimate concern over whether an iPod will teach new parents to shake their babies and more of publicity stunt.

Granted this is negative publicity, but any publicity is good publicity.

The real question then is who is really trying to make this into something?

Is Apple discreetly trying to attract the Baby Shaking crowd?

Or is the designer of “Baby Shaker”, Sikalosoft, trying to drum up some attention for its other iTouch and iPhone applications?

Maybe this is actually a case of a malicious software developer attempting to curb the spread of the human race by teaching its impressionable twenty-somethings to solve thier parental tribulatations through a few shakes of thier iPhone.

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