Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg thinks Apple \u201c[hasn\u2019t] really invented anything great in a while\u201d and that it has been coasting off of its past success. \u201cSteve Jobs invented the iPhone and now they\u2019re just kind of sitting on it 20 years later,\u201d he said this week.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
Zuckerberg made the statements during a nearly three-hour long podcast with Joe Rogan<\/a> where, along with discussing Meta\u2019s moderation policy changes<\/a> and turn against diversity and inclusion policies<\/a>, they got into Meta\u2019s beef with Apple and its policies.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n The conversation actually started with Rogan\u2019s<\/em> issues with Apple. Rogan said he\u2019s moving \u201cfrom Apple to Android\u201d in part because he doesn\u2019t \u201clike being attached to one company.\u201d He also isn\u2019t a fan of Apple\u2019s App Store policies<\/a>. \u201cThe way they do that Apple store, where they charge people 30 percent,\u201d he said. \u201cThat seems so insane that they can get away with doing that.\u201d <\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u201cI have some opinions about this,\u201d Zuckerberg said. While he gives credit to the iPhone as \u201cobviously one of the most important inventions probably of all time,\u201d he argued that Apple has put rules in place that \u201cfeel arbitrary.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Zuckerberg said that Apple has \u201cthoroughly hamstrung the ability for anyone else to build something that can connect to the iPhone in the same way\u201d as Apple\u2019s own products, like the AirPods. If Apple let other people use its protocol, \u201cthere would probably be much better competitors to AirPods out there,\u201d Zuckerberg said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Naturally, there\u2019s business behind Zuckerberg\u2019s gripes. Meta has had longstanding issues with Apple and the 30 percent cut it takes on some App Store transactions. Apple\u2019s iOS restrictions have made it harder for Meta to compete on hardware<\/a> and wiped out billions of dollars in advertising<\/a>. Zuckerberg said that if Apple\u2019s \u201crandom rules\u201d didn\u2019t apply, Meta would make \u201ctwice as much profit or something\u201d based on his \u201cback of the envelope calculation.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Apple is increasingly under pressure to open up. It\u2019s made changes<\/a> in the European Union in response to new laws targeting its policies, and it\u2019s facing a lawsuit from the US Department of Justice<\/a> for holding a monopoly over smartphones. But the company seems intent on maintaining its closed ecosystem until it\u2019s forced to change.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Zuckerberg believes that Apple\u2019s reliance on \u201cjust advantaging their stuff\u201d will ultimately hurt the company. Apple has \u201cbeen so off their game in terms of not really releasing many innovative things,\u201d he said. He said that the tech industry is \u201csuper dynamic,\u201d and \u201cif you just don\u2019t do a good job for like 10 years, eventually, you\u2019re just going to get beat by someone.\u201d (It\u2019s easy to guess who Zuckerberg thinks that might be!)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Apple did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Zuckerberg\u2019s remarks.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u201cThere isn\u2019t a physical world and a digital world anymore.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Zuckerberg touched on a lot of other tech topics as part of his conversation with Rogan, including AI and how he thinks about screen time with his daughter playing Minecraft<\/em>. One area he spent some time on was neural interfaces and how physical and digital worlds will blend together.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n He thinks that \u201cit\u2019s going to be a while before we\u2019re really widely deploying anything that jacks into your brain,\u201d for example, and (naturally) he talked about the benefits of a wrist-based neural interface, which Meta is working on as part of its Orion augmented reality glasses<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Down the line, Zuckerberg envisions a world where you\u2019ll be able to use the neural interface wristband and the glasses to text a friend or an AI and have the glasses give you the answer. He also believes that as smart glasses or even contact lenses as a computing platform become more developed, the internet will be \u201coverlaid\u201d on the physical world.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u201cI think we\u2019ll basically be in this wild world where most of the world will be physical, but there will be this increasing amount of virtual objects or people who are beaming in or hologramming into different things to interact in different ways,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n