Meta chief Mark Zuckerberg taking a potshot at tech giant Apple said that innovation within the hardware company had slowed down during an episode of the “Joe Rogan Experience” podcast. He also called out its rival's “random rules."
Zuckerberg specifically criticised Apple's commission policy for developers on its App Store, a long-standing point of contention. Apple has also faced antitrust scrutiny over these fees.
“On the one hand, [the iPhone has] been great, because now pretty much everyone in the world has a phone, and that’s kind of what enables pretty amazing things," said the Meta CEO.
“But on the other hand ... they have used that platform to put in place a lot of rules that I think feel arbitrary and [I] feel like they haven’t really invented anything great in a while. It’s like Steve Jobs invented the iPhone, and now they’re just kind of sitting on it 20 years later,” Zuckerberg added.
He also accused Apple of making money by squeezing people, having 30 per cent tax on developers by getting people to buy more peripherals and things that plug into it.
"They build stuff like Air Pods, which are cool, but they’ve just thoroughly hamstrung the ability for anyone else to build something that can connect to the iPhone in the same way,” Zuckerberg further pointed out.
According to Zuckerberg, Apple defends itself from pushback from other companies by saying that it doesn’t want to violate consumers’ privacy and security but the problem would be solved if Apple fixed its protocol, like building better security and using encryption.
He also claimed that Meta’s profit would double if Apple stopped applying its “random rules.”
During the podcast, his comments about “masculine energy” in workplaces and his criticism of the Biden administration have drawn significant attention.
Meta's Pro-Trump Approach
As Donald Trump is set to return to the White House next week, Meta is now taking a more pro-Trump approach. Recently, the company ended its longstanding fact-checking program, which was made to curtail the spread of misinformation across its social media apps.
Meta, which owns Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, informed that it will now allow speech and rely on its users to correct inaccurate and false posts through community notes, earlier introduced by Elon Musk on X, and take a more personalised approach to political content.