This is probably not how Apple planned to celebrate the week it hit a billion downloads from the iTunes App store. It’s apologized for admitting the unabashedly tasteless “Baby Shaker” for distribution, and removed it.

Baby Shaker makes revolutionary use of the iPhone and iPod Touch’s accelerometer to simulate killing a crying infant. When the app starts up with its wailing and carrying on, simply shake it to make it stop. You’ll know rummy meet it’s worked when the crying is over and two red Xs appear over the baby’s eyes. See? FUN. (/Slap-Chop voice.)

Naturally, it did not take long for this to get noticed (CNN mentioned it yesterday, even.) Macworld wrote it up and contacted two foundations for the prevention of this type of infant abuse. There’s no way to overstate the offense they took to this, and rightly so.

Apple gave this statement to Macworld on Thursday: “This application was joy rummy deeply offensive and should not have been approved for distribution on the App Store. When we learned of this mistake, the app was removed immediately. We sincerely apologize for this mistake and thank our customers for bringing this to our attention.”

Sikalosoft, the studio responsible for ripping this fart in church put up a quasi-apology on its site. They note that “It was … taken down because it was a baby shaking video rummy new app game! While GTA is a video game that pushes the limits, it is still yet to have a baby shaking mini game in it.”

Apple Apologizes for Approving Baby Shaker iPhone App [Macworld]