To me it's a question of good training, not 'what happens in a real conflict', which is not the same.
At least from what I've seen, good training can and should mean that both training partners are benefiting and learning from the training - this is true regardless of how cooperatively they are training, it's true even if both are 'fighting to win'. It's not just taking turns getting a chance to train (which some people seem to think sometimes in an uke/nage paradigm), both sides ARE training.
So yeah, to me the orange analogy speaks rather nicely to that uke/nage relationship.
Communication consists of both halves too.