Apple’s being walloped by regulators, and it’s increasingly clear most of the tech press doesn’t understand antitrust. Fortunately, Ian Betteridge does, so go and read his blog.
My take, honestly, is all this just makes me feel a bit sad. I like a lot of what Apple does. Even if I didn’t write about Apple, I’d have an iMac, an Apple TV or two, an iPhone, and an iPad. But Apple as it grows (and is expected by the markets to continue doing so) has overreached in some cases, and enacted dark patterns elsewhere.
I imagine a lot of people are rushing to defend Apple by default because, in part, they remember when the company nearly winked out of existence. Others, perhaps, because the company does objectively do an awful lot of things really well, and seems to care more than most rivals about what matters. But that doesn’t excuse the bad stuff, nor that in some cases Apple has decided it’s OK to just be ‘least bad’. That isn’t good enough.
I don’t want an MLS nav item forced on me in Apple TV. I want to install Retroarch on my iPhone. I don’t want ads in the App Store trying to trick me into installing something other than what I searched for. And I don’t want devs of apps I love to partake in a lottery with every single update they file. Small things, of course, but all of these little pieces – from millions and millions of users, businesses and creators – add up.
If nothing else, what happens next will be interesting. But mostly, I hope it will be beneficial, leading to a better future for consumers and Apple alike, even if the Apple that emerges is in key ways different from the one we have today.
Meanwhile, for TapSmart, I wrote about how to use your iPhone to help you declutter. We’ve also just released issue 297 of sister mag Swipe. If you’d like to support our indie iPhone writing, please consider downloading the app and checking out the free trial.
Upcoming stuff
I used to be a regular in Retro Gamer’s pages, but haven’t written for that publication in a long time. Mostly, that’s because it started to become increasingly tough to find people to talk to. (My main interest was – and remains – telling the stories of how games came to be.)
That’s now an itch I want to scratch again, and I’ve identified a few gaps in the magazine’s now extensive making-ofs library. Two articles have been approved, and one dev has agreed to an interview. I’m hoping the other will too, although they’ve so far connected with me on socials but not responded to messages. Fingers crossed!
Other stuff
Almost all my pictures are now on the wall, including my Oli Frey prints and framed Sinclair hardware. I quite like how I dealt with those. While I get the appeal of Grid frames, I like the notion I could take my Sinclairs down, plug them in, and actually use them again. Not that I likely ever will. (See also: my Wire EMI LPs that are the last things to yet go back up on the wall.)
Another slice of happy: Super Monsters Ate My Condo is returning to mobile. Whatever gripes I might have about Apple Arcade, I’m really glad to see a handful of old titles making their way back. Here’s hoping a few more titles lurking on my downgraded iPad Air get a second lease of life on the App Store.
Finally, it’s fantastic to see Digital Eclipse cover the story of Jeff Minter and Llamasoft in its latest release. Jeff’s Metagalactic Llamas Battle at the Edge of Time is seared into my memory as one of the earliest games I played. And I’ve long been a fan, from the VIC-20 days, through Llamatron on the ST, Tempest 2000 on the Jag, and Jeff’s unfortunately unrewarding time on mobile, to the present day. Here’s hoping his unique and compelling mix of arcade games and psychedelia finds favour with a wide range of modern-day gamers.
Elsewhere, I dipped a toe into the Apple vs EU scrap and surprised myself with this conclusion: Apple and the EU’s browser fight will only have one winner – and it won’t be you. As per the article, I do think the EU has a point, but with browsers I’m not sure it’s thought through the likely unintended consequence of its actions.
Finally, on Mastodon, my daily retro game series hit 250 entries, with Snare (for Thalamus, created by Rob Stevens).
Other stuff
Given all the legal fights going on, you have to wonder if there’s something in the water right now. Apple vs the EU – often completely misunderstood by commentators, especially those from the US – is skilfully covered by Baldur Bjarnason. I also recommend Dan Moren’s piece for Six Colors, because it’s good and also to highlight that some smart folks in the US do get it.
Elsewhere, The Verge explores the consequences of Nintendo kicking Yuzu to death in a back alley. Personally, I’m not in favour of current-gen systems being emulated, but I’m also against Nintendo’s known position that all emulation should be wiped out.
Without emulation, most games would be lost – in a literal sense (it’s the pirates who’ve rescued most games from oblivion, after all) and also in an access sense, since gaming companies are keen to sell you the same old suspects over and over again, and in locked formats that mean you cannot take a legally bought ROM or disk image and do with it as you please.
There should be a middle ground, but there probably won’t ever be one. And that Verge article doesn’t explore all of the fallout, given that I’m now reading about people behind multi-emulator frameworks wondering how much Nintendo stuff they have to remove, not because Nintendo has threatened legal action, but because they’re fearful Nintendo will.
And this isn’t me dumping on Nintendo. Others in this space (hello, Sony, eg) have acted similarly multiple times. If they all got their way, playing old games would be like streaming music if the likes of Spotify and Apple Music were replaced by label-specific services, which never gave you more than a handful of greatest hits albums, and pretended 99% of music history just didn’t exist. Bah.
Let’s end on a happier note. Or at least something that made me happy. I finally got a bunch of pictures up on the office wall, which gave me a lift. Now for the rest…
And for this blog, I wrote up a quick piece in response to reports about Apple Arcade’s future: Game over for Apple Arcade?
Upcoming stuff
I’m still working on a piece on Sinclair, delving into the depths of the company’s output. That should be in Stuff before the summer. Meanwhile, my earlier piece on Atari is slated for the issue out in a few weeks.
Elsewhere, I’m digging into music discovery on mobile, and excited about writing up a piece on a very different type of mobile games controller. Or at least a very different use for one.
Other stuff
It’s quite a time for tech companies that should know better doing bad things. HP’s going all-in on the subscription printer game, which charges $7 per month for 20 printed pages. Don’t worry, because you can top that up! And you ‘only’ have to ensure the printer is always online. And sign up for two years. Although you can cancel – by paying HP more than the cost of a new printer. Bargain.
Automattic, which was supposed to be one of the good companies, has decided to sell Tumblr and WordPress (not, note, self-installed) content to AI companies to help them train their models. But don’t worry, because you can opt out and hope those companies actually care about your request, even though there’s no evidence I can see that they’re legally obliged to. Way to detonate years of goodwill, Automattic! (Docusign of all companies is also doing this. Which is quite something, given that the content you feed into it often comprises contracts and NDAs.)
Apple has performed a screeching U-turn on killing web apps, perhaps because the European Commission publicly stated there was no need for Apple to scrap them in the first place. Oh dear. I look forward to certain (mostly US) commentators retracting their “the bad and evil EU is forcing our beloved Apple to do a bad thing” stance and replacing it with a “the bad and evil EU is making it impossible for Apple to know what it should do and that is a bad thing” stance. Fun!
Right, that’s enough negative stuff. How about some positives? Three things, in fact, all about games. First, Kimmo Lahtinen has celebrated a decade of making games. The story is bittersweet regarding sales (as in, several of his games didn’t sell well), but he still seems happy with his lot. Also, if you’ve an iPhone or iPad, I would strongly recommend you buy some of his games. Drift’n’Drive is an absurdly fun racer for a buck, and I adored Day Repeat Day’s clever mix of match-three and social commentary. Get them all.
Elsewhere, having documented and even bug-fixed the original Elite, Mark Moxon has now reconstructed Lander– or, for people of a certain age in the UK, that insanely difficult 3D game on the school’s expensive Acorn Archimedes computers where you attempted to control a spaceship with a mouse and inevitably crashed after approx 0.3 seconds.
Finally, Llamasoft: The Jeff Minter Story is out in a couple of weeks. Alas, not for Mac, because reasons. But almost every other platform will get a combination of games and stories revolving around one of the most standout game makers from the UK.
I wrote about Space Invaders for Stuff, and how that’s lodged in my mind as a very early gaming memory. Minter’s work is there too. The two very old home computing games I remember from my early childhood are Bowling and Metagalactic Llamas: Battle at the Edge of Time. Needless to say, they were two very different games. And I only feel compelled to revisit one of them today.
As ably documented by Michael Tsai, Apple Arcade’s future is looking rocky. This comes from reports Apple’s rowing back on new content and paying less to developers.
Honestly, I always thought Apple Arcade was a strange move for Apple, given that it’s never seemed there was anyone sufficiently senior at the company who genuinely cares about gaming. Music and typography are infused in Apple’s DNA. Gaming is too often presented as something cool to show off the power of new devices, or comes across from Apple execs as a weird thing people waste time on. No new M-series chip or gaming toolkits will get us past that.
However, specifically on Apple Arcade, while I thought it was a weird decision, I’m nonetheless glad it exists. Because it’s objectively good. Sure, people who claim the only ‘real games’ are AAA (and who even attempt to dismiss the Switch, let alone mobiles) won’t give it a chance. But there are loads of fun titles, even if much of the service’s strength now lies in ‘+’ fare (existing App Store releases minus ads/IAP) rather than exclusives. It’s superb for kids who like mobile games (again: no ads; no IAP). And there are still interesting new things to play. (I mean, Arcade added a pinball game at one point. And pinball is pretty niche!)
For me, the main error Apple Arcade made was during its launch. It offered too much, too soon. It was simultaneously overwhelming and somehow yet made people think they could blaze through everything and instantly demand more. And more didn’t come for a long while, and so users felt they weren’t getting good value, even though Arcade at the time cost only five bucks per month.
Retention then became the driver, as subscribers dried up, extinguishing much of the original direction of the service (quality; games as art; experiments; uniqueness) for friendlier and grindy fare that is too often akin to freemium with the IAP ripped out. It’s hard to see where things go now. Maybe the future of Apple Arcade will be mostly + games, thereby turning it into Apple’s equivalent of Google Play Pass, rather than a place to exhibit the pinnacle of mobile games.
Perhaps I’m being unfair, but Apple Arcade feels like the same old story with Apple and gaming: what success occurs is in many ways despite rather than because of Apple’s decisions and direction. I do hope things improve. I won’t hold my breath. Had I been doing so with Apple and gaming, I’d have expired within a year of getting my first Mac, way back in the 1990s.
