Vivid's porn app puts the 'O' in iPhone

Porn comes to the small screen and gets past Apple censors. (Vivid Entertainment)

If pornography has an old-school establishment company, it is probably Vivid Entertainment, a 28-year purveyor. Not surprising, Vivid long ago established a big Web presence. But going mobile is tough — at least on Apple devices — as Apple doesn't allow pornographic apps in its App store.

But on Monday, the company came to iOS devices with Vivid Touch. Like other companies, Vivid has gotten around Apple's gatekeepers by creating Web apps, essentially programs that run inside a Web browser like Safari on the iPhone, iPad and iPod touch.

This is also a technique for less risqué apps, like getting Google Maps back onto devices running iOS 6, to use in place of Apple's roundly criticized Maps app. And it doesn’t require writing an application for each mobile operating system. As long as the OS has an up-to-date browser, a Web app should work.

[SEE ALSO: Top 5 Free Apple Maps Alternatives]

Installing the app requires only going to the Vivid Web site on a mobile browser and signing up. Of course, it's a paid service only, at $5 for a three-day trial or $34 per month. Despite the enticing sound, Vivid Touch simply means that it has touch navigation, just like every iOS app.

As with other Web apps, you can create a desktop icon by clicking the share button in the Web browser and sending an icon to the home screen.

While porn isn't for everyone, it is often in the vanguard of tech development — from digital projectors to DVD to Web video. And the move to Web apps, such as Google Maps or Election Protection (an aid to voting), could be a growing trend as creators try to get onto devices quickly without getting bogged down in the approval process or in programming for each operating system.

Vivid says that it will also release an Android app. Unlike Apple's App Store, Google Play doesn't have any approval restrictions.

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