Mark Zuckerberg slams Apple for lack of innovation and ‘random rules’

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg hit its rival tech giant An apple about weak innovation efforts and “random rules” in a lengthy podcast interview on Friday.

“On the one hand, (the iPhone) was great because now almost everyone in the world has a phone, and it’s something that enables some pretty amazing things,” Zuckerberg said in an episode of “The Joe Rogan Experience.” “But on the other hand … they’ve used this platform to put in a lot of rules that I think seem arbitrary and (I) feel like they haven’t come up with anything great in a while. It’s like Steve Jobs invented the iPhone, and now they’re just sitting on it 20 years later.”

Zuckerberg added that he was thinking iPhone sales have struggled as it takes longer for users to upgrade their phones since the new models aren’t big improvements from previous iterations.

“So how do they make more money as a company? Well, they do it by basically squeezing people and, as you say, they have this 30% tax on developers, making you buy more peripherals and stuff to plug into it,” Zuckerberg said. “You know, they build things like the Air Pods, which are great, but they’ve just completely limited the ability for anyone else to build something that can connect to the iPhone in the same way.”

According to Zuckerberg, Apple is defending itself against pushback from other companies by saying it doesn’t want to compromise user privacy and security. But he said the problem would be solved if Apple fixed its protocol, such as building in better security and using encryption.

“It’s insecure because you haven’t built any security into it. And now you’re using that as a justification for why only your product can connect in an easy way,” Zuckerberg said.

Zuckerberg said that if Apple stopped enforcing its “random rules,” Meta’s profit would double.

He also shot at Apple’s Vision Pro headphoneswhich had disappointing sales in the US. Meta sells its own virtual headset called the Meta Quest.

“I think Vision Pro is, I think, one of the biggest swings at doing something new that they’ve tried in a while,” Zuckerberg said. “And I don’t want to give them a lot of time for that because we do a lot of things where the first version isn’t that good and you want to judge the third version. But I mean, the V1 definitely didn’t hit it out of the park.”

“I heard it’s really good for watching movies,” he added.

Apple did not immediately respond to a request for comment from CNBC.