Mark Zuckerberg Hits Out at Apple, Says They Haven’t Invented Anything Great in a While

Mark Zuckerberg has openly criticised Apple for its lack of ability to invent anything groundbreaking or important in a while. Speaking to renowned podcast show host Joe Rogan in a nearly three-hour podcast, the Meta CEO said that Apple’s co-founder Steve Jobs came up with the iPhone several years back but a product of similar magnitude has not come out since. Zuckerberg also slammed the world’s most valuable company for its “insane” App Store policies and the resistance to open its ecosystem to other players.

Has the iPhone stagnated?

While Zuckerberg has time and again lambasted Apple for being unfair to other companies that rely on its products and platforms and maintaining a sort of monopoly through that practice, his latest remarks put the iPhone in the spotlight.

“(Apple has) used the (iPhone) to put in place a lot of rules that I think feel arbitrary. 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 told Rogan during the podcast. He said that iPhones may not sell as much as they used to, owing to the lack of a breakthrough in their features and specifications. “I think the sales might actually be declining. Part of it is that each generation doesn’t actually get that much better. So people are just taking longer to upgrade than they would before,” he added.

Bad policies?

Zuckerberg’s conversation around the iPhone quickly shifted to one of the biggest inconveniences Meta and several other developers have faced for a long time. He picked the topic of Apple’s App Store policies. While Zuckerberg has made it amply clear he does not agree with the App Store policies, he called Apple’s mandate of charging a 30 per cent commission “insane.” “The way they do that [in the] Apple store, where they charge people 30 per cent. That seems so insane that they can get away with doing that.”

However, Zuckerberg has a theory: Apple’s 30 per cent commission is a way to absorb the impact of declining iPhone sales. “So the number of sales, I think, has generally been flat to declining. So, how are they making more money as a company? Well, they do it by basically squeezing people and having this 30 per cent tax on developers.”

Is Apple unfair?

Apple has been criticised left, right, and centre for not opening up its ecosystem to developers and other tech companies. Zuckerberg’s latest remarks add more gravity to the debate on whether Apple is unfair. According to him, Apple’s rules “feel arbitrary” and have “thoroughly hamstrung the ability for anyone else to build something that can connect to the iPhone in the same way” as its own products. For instance, no other wireless earbuds work as well as the AirPods because of Apple’s rules.

Zuckerberg also talked about Meta’s new moderation policy and the rivalry between the Vision Pro and Meta Quest headsets, calling Apple’s mixed-reality headset good but overpriced.