It turns out that Playboy is not coming to the iPad in app form after all. Instead, it is going to be a web service that will be available to anything capable of browsing the web, including the iPad, and “will utilize iPad functions”. There will still be a censored app version, since Apple has control over what goes into its store but not what’s available on the web. Of course, it will only be available when connected to the Internet, not at all times as an app would.
Not really a surprise, in retrospect. In fact, I should probably have figured it would be something like this from the outset. It is obvious it’s much more likely that a publisher’s tweet is incomplete than it is Steve Jobs will reverse his previous position on family friendly stuff on his devices.
Of course, as Playboy demonstrates, there is still plenty of iPad-compatible porn on the web for anyone who cares to search it out. But Apple doesn’t care about what you do on the web; it only looks bad for people to be able to find that kind of thing directly on its own site.
Hopefully this works and Zinio and Comixology follow suit with a web app version of the store for the iPad.