The Glorious Apple religion has entered a new phase where it will burn books that do not fit into its squeaky clean marketing image.

Apple's App Store, which sells books, has decided to do a word search on every title it sells.  If it finds one with a naughty word it will delete them from the store. Unfortunately for Apple, its censorship machine found a rude word in David Carnoy's detective novel called Knife Music. Carnoy is better known among the tech fraternity as a CNet hack.

The iPhone's SDK, which was written on tablets of stone and handed down on high after being carved in stone by Steve's own hand, says that "Applications must not contain any obscene, pornographic, offensive or defamatory content or materials of any kind (text, graphics, images, photographs, etc.), or other content or materials that in Apple's reasonable judgement (sic) may be found objectionable by iPhone or iPod touch users."

In other words, no book should contain words that most people use on the street.  Titles are limited to  those which have nothing to say about the life of the ordinary world.  If Apple controlled the world literature would be limited to bland press releases which are as true to life as Disneyland.

Carnoy makes the point that it would be better if writers wrote their swear words in Roman, which the Apple inquisitors would not be able to find. Oddly, last week Apple pulled its finger and gave into the influential fart joke lobby last week and allowed the iFart Mobile software in its "Mature" section.  Apparently, you have to be older than 17 to tell a fart joke, which will be news to every boy over the age of five.

When my book, When a Tree Falls, comes out in the Spring it will not come out on the iPhone.  Not only does it contain swear words which are common among the IT community, it features jokes at Apple's expense which will also fall foul of the censors.