In all honesty – without access to the pertinent particulars as to why Apple have taken this approach – imho it is absurd for Apple to expurgate in this fashion.

Apple may well radiate a sense of urbane sophistication, but they do not have a mandate to qualify social behavior across the community.

Suitably hidden at the back, out of the way, I don’t see the harm – well, except for the horror of hundreds of kids playing fart sounds on the bus but that’s besides the point.

Set a ‘quarantine’ section for applications. Apple could set a policy such as ‘any iffy application goes into the quarantine section’. If a user wants to look into that section all the customary warnings should pop up, then people can evaluate and download the applications, rate them, and if they are deemed ‘worthy’ (by the users) could automatically show up in the real store. They could extend this to a full rating system in which user’s evaluation tags the application into specific categories (e.g., childish pranks and jokes, or useless but fun for a while). That way developers could not complain to Apple for their placement, it is their own users setting the policy (and each user can set their own ‘tag threshold’)

This policy could be extended to ‘any application that remains quarantined for a month is deleted’ or even ‘it costs $30 a month to keep an application in quarantine after the first month’. Better yet, extend this to the whole store, ‘if your application is not downloaded more than 100 times a month it has to cost at least $1, and if it is not downloaded more than 10 times a month after that it goes into the garage sale section and you have to pay Apple to keep it there unless you are evaluated 4 stars or above’.

In short, Apple should 1) allow everything, or almost anything, in (i.e., a very clear policy for developers), 2) allow the users themselves decide what is ‘worthy’ of being in the store, 3) allow for the different threshold of ‘worthiness’ of each individual user, 4) set a real cost for the developers to keep crap present in the iPhone store, 5) make sure that really valuable applications that are useful for very small communities can remain in the store.