from www.forbes.com – Playboy founder Hugh Hefner touched off some excitement with a series of ebullient tweets yesterday, announcing that current and past issues of the racy men’s magazine will be available on the iPad beginning in March. Hefner told his Twitter followers that the iPad edition will be uncensored — surprising news to many, since Apple founder Steve Jobs has made it clear he wants the iPad to be a porn-free zone.

“Will Apple finally allow adult content?” asked Apple headlines.

“This is pretty cool,” wrote Business Insider. “However it shows the ridiculous double standard of Apple on its app store vis à vis racy content, which won’t let pornographers or even artists show a nipple, but if you’re a big media company, hey! Naked girls galore.”

Actually, there’s no double standard. Nor did Apple COO Tim Cook use his boss’s medical leave of absence as an opportunity to nullify the iTunes app store’s restrictive content guidelines. Rather, Playboy will be available to iPad users just as multitudinous forms of porn have been all along: through a web browser.

From a Playboy spokeswoman:

We are releasing a web-based subscription service with Bondi Digital Publishing that will give users access to every issue of Playboy both past and present. The service will be iPad compatible and will utilize iPad functions.

We also have plans to release a non-nude version of a Playboy-branded iPad app in the coming months that adheres to all of Apple’s policies and guidelines.

Apple declined to comment.