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Playboy, the adult magazine run by Hugh Heffner, has agreed to remove all adult content from its iPad app in order to avoid breaching Apple’s strict content rules.
Anyone paying £3.20 for the digital version of the magazine will have to do without the explicit photo spreads that titillated generations.

The Playmate of the Month, one of the magazine’s most popular photo features, will only appear on the iPad as a tasteful headshot.

Playboy agreed to censor its content in order to secure a place in the App Store, from which any software which Apple considers “obscene, pornographic, offensive or defamatory” is banned.

While Playboy has long trumpeted the strength of its journalism – “I only read it for the articles” is the standard response of men caught with a copy of the magazine by their partners – many iPad users have expressed frustration at the self-censorship.

Apple is almost unique in the technology industry for taking an active stance against pornography. In April Steve Jobs, the chief executive, wrote to a customer who complained about Apple’s self-appointed role as moral arbiter to insist that “we have a moral responsibility to keep porn off the iPhone.”

Android Market, the Google run App Store rival, does not ban adult content.