Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg on Friday hit out at tech giant Apple, accusing the company of lacking significant innovation and imposing arbitrary rules on developers. Speaking on the ‘Joe Rogan Experience’, Mr Zuckerberg praised the iPhone for revolutionizing global connectivity, but criticized Apple for failing to create groundbreaking products in recent years.
“On the one hand, (the iPhone) has been great, because now almost everyone in the world has a phone, and it enables quite amazing things,” Mr. Zuckerberg said. “But on the other hand, they’ve used that platform to create a lot of rules that I think seem arbitrary and (to me) I feel like they haven’t really invented anything great in a while. It’s like It’s like Steve Jobs invented the iPhone, and now he’s sitting on it 20 years later.”
Mr Zuckerberg also said the lack of major upgrades in new models was hurting iPhone sales. He suggested that Apple was making profits by “squeezing people” through 30 percent commissions on developers and by inducing consumers to buy additional peripherals such as AirPods.
“They make things like AirPods, which are great, but they’ve completely disrupted the ability for anyone else to make something that can connect to the iPhone in the same way,” he said.
Mr Zuckerberg further claimed that Meta’s profits could double if Apple stopped enforcing its “random rules”.
The billionaire also criticized Apple’s stance on privacy and security, which the company often cites to justify its strict rules. He argued that Apple could solve the problem by improving its protocols, such as increasing security measures and using encryption, rather than restricting third-party developers.
“It’s insecure because you didn’t build any security into it,” Mr. Zuckerberg said. “And now you’re using it as a justification for why only your product can connect in an easy way.”
“I think Vision Pro is one of the bigger changes in doing a new thing that they’ve tried in a while,” Mr. Zuckerberg said, in reference to Apple’s mixed-reality headset, whose sales have been disappointing. “But I mean, V1, it certainly didn’t hit it out of the park.”
