By Dan Moren
April 18, 2024 8:20 AM PT
Apple’s emulator about-face is good for everyone
Less than two weeks after Apple changed its rules on emulators, Riley Testut’s Delta game emulator climbed to the number one spot in the U.S. App Store within twelve hours of its launch. If Testut’s names sounds familiar it’s because he’s also the purveyor of the recently launched Alt Store PAL, the first third-party app marketplace in the European Union, enabled by the Digital Markets Act.
On Mastodon, MacStories’s John Voorhees described Delta’s success as “what pent up demand looks like.”
I’d go further and say it’s not pent-up but penned up. This wasn’t merely a case of waiting for a company to release a product it hadn’t gotten to yet—like when Apple released the iPhone 6 amid desire for a larger phone—but of a product that was actively withheld as a matter of policy. Nothing technical prevented Delta from running on iOS three weeks ago, or even three years ago. (To that point: Delta was already available for those iOS users who wanted to engage in the necessary circumventions.) Apple had merely decided, as a matter of policy, not to allow emulators on the App Store for its own reasons.1
The reversal was less capricious: with the launch of third-party marketplaces in the EU, of which the previously mentioned Alt Store PAL (with Delta as its marquee offering) is at the forefront, Apple is attempting to neutralize one of the biggest advantages of those competitors. Emulators like Delta are often used as an example of something that Apple wouldn’t allow in its own stores that third-party marketplaces could offer instead. There’s probably no other category of apps that replaces it in that regard.2 With emulators now available on the App Store worldwide, it will be interesting to see if there’s anything else that draws users towards third-party stores in Europe.
One view of this is that Apple allowing for emulators on its platform is competitive. And that’s true…but it’s equally true that it was dragged kicking and screaming into this competition by outside forces.
Think different, compete better
Last week, I wrote that the change of Apple’s policy was that regulation—or the threat of regulation—works. My pal John Gruber suggested that should be revised to “regulation can work” or “regulation sometimes works”. That seems to me to go without saying: not all regulation is good or implemented well any more than all business decisions are. But let me take my own shot at revising my thesis: regulation—or, more broadly, the existence of regulatory bodies—is necessary.
There are those who think that all problems in business should be solved by the market, as though envisioning a mano-a-mano, no-holds-barred, winner-take-all cage match between corporations.
But this specific case of emulators would seem to point out the shortcomings of that view. Clearly, there was plenty of demand for emulation apps—take Delta’s success as evidence—but Apple steadfastly refused to meet that demand by allowing for supply. It didn’t do so until essentially forced into it by regulatory changes in the European Union.3 Without that change, the chances that Apple would have eventually made the decision on its own is vanishingly small.4
One of John’s recurring points is that Apple is consistent: “Apple’s own needs first, users second, developers third.” An astute observation, if not particularly surprising for any profit-seeking corporation, but this situation also makes clear that no amount of combined demand from users or developers will outweigh Apple’s own needs. What makes the emulator situation particularly strange is that offering them on the App Store doesn’t actually seem to hurt Apple at all—and probably even helps it, given the evident popularity of the category. This is the rare situation that’s good for everybody.5
This is why the existence of regulatory bodies and use of regulation, even if it isn’t always universally good or correct, is a necessity to get the best out of competition—to keep the system honest, the playing field level. Checks and balances are just as important for business as for a system of government, and the bigger and more powerful companies get, the even more important it is.
Recent comparisons of Apple to Boeing may not be entirely apt, but here’s one place where I think there is some similarity: Boeing operates in an industry where it is (in the U.S. at least) the market share leader, and together with its largest rival, Airbus, dominates the field as an effective duopoly. As of 2018, the two manufacturers accounted for about two-thirds of all commercial airlines in use in the U.S.; those numbers go even higher if you’re talking about just larger airplanes like jumbo jets—or perhaps we could call them “performance aircraft.” I don’t think anybody would argue that Boeing’s in need of less regulation.
Or, if I can be permitted another analogy, much as we get mad at the umpires for bad calls, they’re on the field to keep the teams honest and to provide impartial accountability. John and I would probably both find a game between the Red Sox and the Yankees without any umpires to be entertaining, but I’m not sure either of us believe it would show off the real spirit of competition.6
The success of Delta illustrates that perhaps it’s time for both Apple and the App Store to evolve. Despite our fond memories of the team that once hoisted a pirate flag over its campus, a trillion-dollar corporation is not a bunch of maverick upstarts. The idea of Tim Cook putting up the Jolly Roger on the roof of Apple Park7 is not only risible in the extreme, but displays a lack of self-awareness for the current state of affairs. Let’s not root for Apple to win—let’s root for Apple to do better.
- Perhaps for avoiding the appearance of impropriety? But emulators have been widely available on the Mac for years. In fact one of the landmark cases about emulation, Sony Computer Entertainment, Inc. v. Connectix Corp., was about a game emulator that ran on the Mac. ↩
- The biggest other draw (probably larger than all of emulators as a category) is probably a single app, Epic’s Fortnite. ↩
- I’ll give the company the barest amount of credit for making that change worldwide; it certainly could have restricted emulators to use in the European market, but I think that would have made US customers even angrier—and rightfully so. ↩
- I’m tempted to say it would never have allowed them, but only a Sith deals in absolutes. ↩
- Well, maybe not Nintendo? ↩
- As always, an exception to the rule: For decades I played ultimate frisbee, which thanks to its hippie roots, is famously self-refereed. Official play often uses “Observers” though, who don’t have ref powers but can be appealed to as impartial. However, the professional North American leagues do have refs. ↩
- Where would Lisa Jackson even stand?! ↩
[Dan Moren is the East Coast Bureau Chief of Six Colors. You can find him on Mastodon at @dmoren@zeppelin.flights or reach him by email at dan@sixcolors.com. His latest novel, the supernatural detective story All Souls Lost, is out now.]
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