any clues? what does it do? purpose? does it even have one?

Seems like it was meant as a joke, to see how many people would install it. Funny stuff...

Originally Posted by Etho

Seems like it was meant as a joke, to see how many people would install it. Funny stuff...

lol...actually it was. but now in version 0.3 even our female clientele can use it for stimulating, pleasureable purposes

From magenta's author, in IRC:

<Ste> The point of magenta is to show that people will blindly download any app that they can get their hands on, without knowing anything about it, or what it's for, or what it does, or what it *might* do to their iPhone. That is dumb. People need to be smarter than that.
<Ste> The winners of this experiment were the handful of folks who insisted I tell them what it was, before they'd install it.
<Ste> The other 2500+ people out there, lost.
<Ste> the description was deliberately vague. that was the point
<Ste> that night have done lots of nasty things to your iPhone
<Ste> might*

Of course, it didn't show that point to anyone but Ste, so the whole exercise was rather moot...except to Ste.

The newer versions of Installer.app give an extra warning when the app is from an "untrusted" source.