With the Internet, there really is no reason to buy Playboy other than for the articles, and admittedly some of those are really good. Good enough, Playboy hopes, to get twenty bucks a year out of you without the support of boobies.
The Playboy app, newly available for iOS, will still feature pictorials, just of women with their clothes on. Which, come to think of it, probably caters to the kind of person who looks for bikini pictures on Facebook, so Playboy might actually be on to something.
But why did they put out an app without, well, what the magazine is famous for?
“As the on-the-go extension of the Playboy brand, our new app brings the best of Playboy with original, thought-provoking and enticing bite-sized content that captures our design-driven and discernible style,” said Scott Flanders, chief executive of Playboy Enterprises, in a statement. “We’ve rebuilt Playboy for iPhone from the ground up to attract the new generation of Gen Y fans who enjoy the indulgences of the artisanal good life and modern culture.”
They hope the young folks enjoy that artisanal good life so much they’re willing to pay $2 a month, $11 every six months, or $20 a year for Playboy. So, basically, Playboy is hoping that Apple reverses its stance on nudity very, very quickly. Either that, or the Android app is going to be about a thousand times better.