Last week, as part of his apparent ongoing campaign to rebrand himself as a more Musk-like figure, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg sat down with Joe Rogan for a three-hour discussion about free speech, government “censorship,” and how important it is. that American companies win the AI race. But one of the other topics Zuck seemed intent to focus on was Apple.
The Facebook founder aired many of his beefs with the company, particularly his displeasure regarding the fees that some developers need to pay on Apple’s App Store to distribute their wares on the platform (fees that Apple cut in half for small developers). Yet Zuck went even further, suggesting the Cupertino company isn’t the innovative powerhouse it once was—and it hasn’t been for decades.
“It’s like Steve Jobs invented the iPhone and now they’re just kind of sitting on it 20 years later,” Zuckerberg said, later adding, “And I’m pretty optimistic that just because they’ve been so off their game in terms of not really releasing many innovative things, that eventually. , , if you just don’t do a good job for like 10 years, eventually, you’re just going to get beat by someone.”
A matter of privacy
Zuck’s comments about Apple’s supposed lack of innovation are baffling, especially coming from someone as knowledgeable about the tech industry and its progress over the past several decades as he is. But his comments are much easier to understand if you consider the degree to which Apple’s most important innovation over the past ten years has harmed Meta’s business practices.
Zuckerberg seems to believe that hardware advancements are the only ones that count as “innovation” at Apple. But I don’t think it’s fair to limit Apple to such a narrow scope. After all, the company isn’t just a hardware company. It makes software and provides services, which all encompass an ecosystem that is unlike any other in the tech industry. It is an ecosystem that offers convenience, intuitiveness, and interoperability. And most importantly, it is an ecosystem that has revolutionized digital privacy.
Apple’s greatest innovation over the last decade isn’t something we can hold in our hands or show off to someone else. It’s our power to keep more of our data away from the corporations and institutions seeking to harness our thoughts, locations, and connections for their own financial gain. Accessing and monetizing this information about us is Meta’s bread and butter, and many of the privacy innovations Apple has introduced to its ecosystem in recent years have harmed Meta’s ability to do this.
Innovation after innovation
Take, for example, just one of Apple’s recent privacy innovations in iOS 18—the ability for users to restrict app access to only the contacts they choose. Social media giants like Meta hate this feature, because it means they can no longer gain unrestricted access to everyone in your address book—to your friends, doctors, and religious leaders. This means that they lose control over knowing everyone you know and can’t build a complete social graph for you.
