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

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg slammed rival tech giant Apple for lackluster innovation efforts and “random rules” in a lengthy podcast interview on Friday.

“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,” Zuckerberg said in an episode of the “Joe Rogan Experience.” “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 that he thought iPhone sales were struggling because consumers are taking longer to upgrade their phones because new models aren’t big improvements from prior iterations.

“So how are they making more money as a company? Well, they do it by basically, like, squeezing people, and, like you’re saying, having this 30% tax on developers by getting you to buy more peripherals and things that plug into it,” Zuckerberg said. “You know, 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.”

Apple defends itself from pushback from other companies by saying that it doesn’t want to violate consumers’ privacy and security, according to Zuckerberg. But he said that the problem would be solved if Apple fixed its protocol, like building better security and using encryption.

“It’s insecure because you didn’t build any security into it. And then 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 applying its “random rules,” Meta’s profit would double.

He also took shots at Apple’s Vision Pro headset, which had disappointing U.S. sales. Meta sells its own virtual headsets called the Meta Quest.

“I think the Vision Pro is, I think, one of the bigger swings at doing a new thing that they tried in a while,” Zuckerberg said. “And I don’t want to give them too hard of a time on it, because we do a lot of things where the first version isn’t that good, and you want to kind of judge the third version of it. But I mean, the V1, it definitely did not 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.