Over at Stuff this week, I plead with tech companies to stop adding obnoxious eye-searing lights to gadgets. And I totally forgot to include fans, mostly because ours have folded paper taped around them, blocking their own stupid eye-searing bright blue beams, which are the opposite of what you’d want in a bedroom. Or, indeed, any room.
I turned on my RGB30 for the first time in a few weeks. It was fine. Clearly, ArkOS FTW, even though the UI is terrible compared to Rocknix. Bah.
I messed around with Beeper for a feature. It simultaneously made me want a unified social inbox all the more – and realise Beeper isn’t it. It’s OK, but too much spam leaks through. I’m hoping Project Tapestry scratches this itch. If not, it’ll be time to add a bunch more Threads, Bluesky, Mastodon and YouTube feeds to NetNewsWire – and more newsletters.
This Thursday there’s a general election in the UK. Amusingly, it’s on 4 July, which means Brits have something to celebrate on that day, for once. Although how happy I am on Friday will depend on how much of a kicking the Tories get and whether a small miracle happens where I live, turfing out a terrible Tory MP for a much better alternative. Fingers crossed…
I want more: a world where iPads and Apple TVs are havens for emulators for everything from classic arcade titles to obscure home micros. But Apple’s rules explicitly talk of ‘retro console games’. What does that mean for DOSBox, FinalBurn Neo, Retroarch, or an Apple II emulator? We’ve no way to know.
Well, we know now. iDOS 3 was rejected from the App Store, with Apple citing that iDOS is “not a retro game console”. The thing is, nor is the C64. But there are C64 emulators on the App Store. And nor is the ZX81. But Apple approved a ZX81 emulator. And nor is the MSX. Yet there’s an MSX emulator on the App Store. You get the idea.
Yet again, Apple rules are incoherent and inconsistently applied. Yet again, developers have no idea if they decide to work on a really great product in this space (or any space, given Apple’s “we’ll know it when we see it” approach) whether Apple will reject it. No wonder most of the initial slew of emulators have been churnware.
This also makes me increasingly think that the only reason Apple opened this space up on the App Store was the screw with AltStore, which still hasn’t had a single approved third-party app. But there, Delta was the headline act – the thing everyone wanted, as evidenced by it topping the App Store charts for days.
But now people on iPhone have some emulators, perhaps they’re satisfied. So job done for Apple, I suppose. But there are still questions. Not “will we ever get mini vMac or an Apple II emulator for iPhone?” because I think we all know the answer to that. But what about MAME for iOS, which is currently in limbo? MAME is not a “retro game console”. But then again, nor is FBA, and a version of that already exists on the App Store. And will Apple clamp down on RetroArch and demand it remove cores that clash with the rules and approvals it’s haphazardly applied elsewhere?
That said, all this assumes Apple is even remotely aware of what RetroArch actually is or does, what old hardware is or isn’t a games console (good luck anyone working on an iPhone 8-bit Atari emulator), and what each individual emulator emulates. Ultimately, Apple doesn’t really care about any of this stuff, and that’s the real problem.
Lots and lots of WWDC24, no doubt. I’m currently wondering if we’ll hear these words: “And we call it… Apple OS”.
Other stuff
I’ve felt something nagging at me for some time now – a slowly building unease and feeling of being overwhelmed. Which I now realise is burnout. So apologies for the short one this week. I’m sure lots of interesting stuff happened, but I’ve decided this weekend needs to be one for me. Normal service will be resumed as soon as we know what normal is, as an excellent game, based on a towel, based on a book, based on a radio show, once told me.
Over at TapSmart, I wrote about the best alternatives to Safari for iPhone and what I want to see at WWDC 2024. Somehow, the latter wasn’t just ‘an off switch for the Home indicator’ and ‘for Apple to FINALLY let you sync photos to iCloud without you having to manually trigger uploads because the iPhone only has 93% of its battery charge left’.
Other stuff
Apple’s emulation rules remain fuzzy, but RetroArch made it to the App Store. I never thought I’d see the day. Although it is cut down – many cores are missing, either because Apple won’t allow JIT, or because it’s pissing around with other developers and the RetroArch dev was being cautious. (Apple reportedly keeps rejecting MAME4iOS for spam, much to the chagrin of the MAME4iOS creator.)
Unsurprisingly, RetroArch’s appearance on iOS kicked off yet more ‘emulation is illegal’ rubbish. Emulators are legal. Yes, a great many files people load into them may not be legit but that doesn’t make the tech itself illegal, just as it doesn’t make e-readers, music players and video players illegal. Of course, that doesn’t stop people arguing otherwise. (Personally, I wish more effort was expended by games companies and individuals to provide legal routes to play – and buy – old games than spreading rubbish about emulators.)
It also made very clear broader reporting on emulators is crap. As I said on Threads, articles should make it clear that emulators are not always straightforward to use. People assume they’ll be like Spotify, when at best they’re more like VLC. Even for seasoned emulation fans, RetroArch is a UX nightmare.
Personally, I use it often – but usually with a front-end on Linux. As-is on iPhone, it’s trying. And I fear for the people who spend time setting the thing up on Apple TV, only for tvOS to one day randomly flush the cache and crush all their efforts.
Speaking of crushing, Apple’s terrible advert continues to cause fallout. Ken Segall has a great piece on it. And Samsung tried to capitalise on it with its own ad. “Creativity cannot be crushed” was the theme. A few tiny snags, however.
First, while the ad has more humanity than Apple’s, it lacks creativity. Secondly, ‘with Galaxy AI’ is mentioned at the end, for… some reason. And thirdly, the actual product – a high-end tablet – does nothing more than display sheet music the guitarist in the advert barely looks at. If anything, that neatly sums up the depressing state of the app ecosystem on Android, which Google crushed all enthusiasm for long ago.
Finally, Quinn Nelson showed off a new iPad hover trick. Some will doubtless dismiss this as gimmickry. But this subtle effect surely has potential benefits, in providing another visual cue regarding a tool that doesn’t exist in reality, including its orientation. Previously, just the mark was previewed. Now, the shape of the tool itself can also be seen. It’d be interesting to hear from digital artists whether they find this useful.
