Thursday, the application, which includes photos of topless women, went on sale for $1.99 and observers noted it was the first application Apple allowed to be sold on the iTunes site that included nudity. Some took it as a sign that Apple, which has followed a strict policy against allowing such applications on iTunes, was lightening up.

Another reason for that conclusion: Last week Apple released the iPhone OS v3.0 that includes sophisticated parental controls to prevent children from downloading adult-themed software.

During the day, however, the application disappeared from the AppStore site, leading everyone to the assumption that Apple had blocked sales of the product. But then the Hottest Girls developer, Allenthegeek.com, posted a statement saying that the application wasn't available because the demand overwhelmed its servers, which had to be shut down.

As it happens, that turned out to be bluster -- or good marketing. On Friday, Apple issued a statement confirming that it had removed Hottest Women from the AppStore and reiterated its policy prohibiting the sale of applications that contain "inappropriate content" such as pornography.

"The developer of this application added inappropriate content directly from their server after the application had been approved and distributed, and after the developer had subsequently been asked to remove some offensive content," the statement said. "This was a direct violation of the terms of the iPhone Developer Program."