Shoemaker caught selling fart, urination apps

Apple's director of applications technology, Phillip Shoemaker, has partly withdrawn from social networks following a Wired story accusing of him hypocrisy. A Twitter account has been completely removed, and a LinkedIn profile has been edited; each at one point referenced Shoemaker as the owner of GrayNoodle, a company selling iPhone apps. Some app aggregation sites have also pointed to Shoemaker as the company's owner.

The output of GrayNoodle includes seven titles, one of which is Animal Farts, a generator of rude sounds and animations for different animals. Another is iWiz, which according to its description "allows you to simulate urination: faster, slower, or just a trickle." In its article, Wired notes that despite Apple's normal emphasis on quality, apps like those sold by Shoemaker tend to clutter the App Store, making it difficult to find genuinely well-crafted titles. Shoemaker controls the App Store process.

Although an Apple spokeswoman insists that GrayNoodle's apps were "written, submitted and approved before he became an Apple employee," three of these are known to have been published after March 9th, by which point Shoemaker had begun his work for Apple. These include iWiz, Medical Poetry and 101 Cocktails. Apple normally blocks employees from selling apps unless they get special permission from an executive, which may have been granted if they were developed prior to his changing jobs.

by MacNN Staff