Steve Jobs wants you to get a Droid for porn

Or at least that's what TechCrunch is reporting. According to the site, Jobs sent a concerned customer named Matthew Browning an email, suggesting that if he wanted porn on his phone, he should get an Android.

ZDNet's Jason Perlow has written quite a bit about the regional content controls on his iPad and Apple seems to be getting increasingly Disneyfied in its approach to Apps. My favorite analysis of the morality that Steve Jobs' feels compelled to impose on his customers who pay top dollar for Apple equipment came from Chris Matyszczyk over on CNET:

There is surely nothing to stop you, should you be so inclined, from opening up the Safari browser on your iPhone and surfing for as much porn as your little heart cares to consume...Isn't the truth that Apple can't stop porn from appearing on the iPhone, but it can attempt...to avoid the perception that the company is directly making money from it?

Ideally we wouldn't all end up like Trekkie Monster from Avenue Q. His interview below is fairly telling:

However, as the Apple-Google rivalry heats up, it's becoming clear that the battle lines are being drawn, with Apple painting Google as the Wild West of the mobile web, ripe with lawlessness and, well, porn. Google has been a bit less direct, simply touting their own open approach versus those of their competitors.

I've received a few tweets today asking me why I made the jump from Blackberry to Android for my mobile phone. Obviously, the web browsing experience and Google-centric Apps/integration were key for a guy who eats, drinks, and breathes Google. However, the idea of owning a phone running on an open system for which I could write, download, or use any number of Apps, no matter how tawdry, has a lot of appeal. It's not because I actually want to download or code said tawdry apps; I have 5 kids who will try to do everything from eat my Incredible to see just how many naughty apps I might have installed. Rather, it's for the same reason that I ultimately prefer Linux to Windows or OS X. It's just plain open.

I think there's room for both approaches in the industry. One has to wonder, however, what the 2012 party conventions will look like. Will the Republican convention shimmer with flashy iPhones and iPads, free from smut, while the Democratic convention will see countless delegates and attendees texting on their Android phones? I don't even want to think about what will be on the tablets at the Libertarian convention.

I'm joking here, of course (well, sort of). Obviously there is a middle ground and plenty of card-carrying Libertarians I know have iPhones. I will be curious, though, how much of the mobile battle between Apple and Google will center on features and how much will center on content.