Users urged to quiet a crying baby with a shake
Consumer outrage over an iPhone game called “Baby Shaker” has resulted in Apple pulling it from its iTunes App store. The 99 cent game that encourages users to quiet a crying baby with a vigorous shake went on sale Monday with the following instruction: “See how long you can endure his or her adorable cries before you just have to find a way to quiet the baby down!” The user was instructed to then shake the on-screen black-and-white drawing of a baby with large red X’s over its eyes. An applications review website called Krapps spotted the game and protested about it. Within hours, other websites and Twitter were condemning Apple, which claims to vet every app carefully before approval (it has turned down a game that involved throwing shoes at George W. Bush). Organizations including the National Center on Shaken Baby Syndrome also condemned the company for approving the game’s sale.