Horrifying: ‘Baby Shaker’ Approved for App Store

In what has to be one of the dumbest moves in recent months, the folks at Apple have approved an iPhone app called Baby Shaker, which encourages the user to stop the incessant crying of a baby pictured on-screen by literally shaking it to death.

If you shake your iPhone long enough, two red X's appear over the baby's eyes.

"See how long you can endure his or her adorable cries before you just have to find a way to quiet the baby down!"

That's the sales material for the Baby Shaker app.  Seriously.

Jennipher Dickens, a woman whose son was injured in 2007 after being shaken by his father, brought the new app to the attention of the folks over at CNet, who verified that the app does in fact exist.

"As a mother of a child who was violently shaken at 7 weeks old, causing a severe brain injury, and the founder of a national organization for Shaken Baby Syndrome prevention (as well as the communications director for a national organization helping children with brain injuries), I don't have to tell you how much this horrifies me!!!" she wrote in an e-mail.

What is Apple thinking? Isn't society violent enough without iPhone apps where people pretend to shake babies to death? Maybe I just find this upsetting because I have kids myself, no, actually it's because this iPhone app is an outrage.

Let's hope that Apple wakes up and smells the coffee.

Watch the video below, if you can stomach it...

UPDATE: Baby Shaker has been removed from the App Store.  Score one for Apple, even if it was a little late...

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Technorati Tags: Apple iPhone, Baby Shaker, iPhone, Shaken Baby Syndrome, WTF

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