Emulators are taking over the App Store

Delta, an app for emulating and playing retro games on your iPhone, has been at the top of the App Store rankings for days. Apple spent years keeping apps like this off its platforms before reversing course earlier this month in the face of European regulation and the threat of a whole bunch of new third-party app stores.

Obviously, there was huge pent-up demand for Delta. But is this a singular phenomenon or the start of a new more open future for the iPhone? What else might Apple allow in the App Store if it means keeping you in the App Store?

On this episode of The Vergecast, we discuss how Delta got into the App Store and what it might mean for the future of the iPhone. We don’t really talk about all the thorny legal issues around ROMs and emulation because they’re thorny and confusing and don’t even really have a clear answer, but we’ll get back to it soon.

After that, we talk about some big news in big tech: Google’s corporate reorg as it tries to compete in an AI world and the new release of Meta AI that puts a chatbot in practically every social app on your phone. Everybody’s all in on AI... but to what end? Is the AI revolution real, or is it just a fad? No one really knows, but everyone’s spending billions just in case.

Finally, we do a lightning round in which we blast through a week of bizarre TikTok news, worry about the new Atlas robot, and wonder when things are going to get Samsung Saturday weird. We also go on a long tangent about Mini LEDs and broadcast TV, because this is The Vergecast, and that’s what we do here.

If you want to know more about everything we discuss in this episode, here are some links to get you started, first on emulators:

On AI:

On TV tech:

And in the lightning round: