touchy.
During an interview with Joe Rogan, famous (and often controversial) American podcasterZuckerberg took the opportunity to make some revelations on a wide variety of subjects. For example, he confirmed that the Biden administration gave him asked to actively censor content evoking Covid vaccinationand in particular the side effects Yet there was truth!
denounces Zuckerberg, who specifies that he is generally rather in favor of vaccination.
“Apple hasn’t invented anything terrible since the iPhone”
Obviously in great shape, the CEO of Meta also raised the issue of Apple, a company with which he admits to having always had a complicated relationship. For him, the Cupertino company’s current problem seems to be the lack of innovation, which pushes them to lock users in a form of golden prisonfavoring its own products.
Apple has]used the iPhone to implement many rules that seem arbitrary to me. I feel like they haven’t really come up with anything great in a while. It’s like Steve Jobs invented the iPhone and they’re just relying on it 20 years later.
Actually, I think year to year, I’m not even sure they’re still selling more iPhones at this point. I think sales might actually be down. Part of this is that each generation doesn’t really get better. People therefore renew their devices less often than before. So the number of sales, I think, has remained stable or declining. So how do they make more money as a business? Well, they basically do it by oppressing people and imposing this 30% tax on developers.
Pour Zuckerberg, these taxes and restrictions around privacy allow Apple to favor its own applications and servicesestimating that they could double its turnover if Apple did not put so many obstacles in their way.
Apple favors its own accessories
Another source of discontent, Zuckerberg believes that Apple is doing everything to block accessory makers. He notably takes the example of AirPods, which use a simplified protocol for connection, but closed and impossible to use for third parties, while it is not particularly secure. Apple, however, puts forward this argument when asked to use this famous protocol:
They make products like AirPods, which are cool, but they have completely hindered anyone’s ability to make something that could connect to the iPhone in the same way. There were plenty of other companies in the world that could have made really good headphones, but Apple has a specific protocol that they built into the iPhone that allows AirPods to connect to it.
It’s much more transparent, but they don’t let anyone else use the protocol. If they did, there would likely be much better competitors to AirPods on the market. And every time you insist on it, they become very touchy and they defend themselves by saying that “if we let other companies connect to our stuff, it would violate people’s privacy and security”. In fact, not at all, they would just have to develop a better design of the protocol.
One thing we asked them for the Ray-Ban meta glasses that we built was, “Can we use the protocol that you use for AirPods and some of these other things so that we can connect this easily?” So that it’s not too painful for people who want to use it?”
This protocol is almost not encrypted. It’s like plain text. And they say, “well, we can’t let you connect to it because it wouldn’t be secure.” This is the only justification they use to prevent another product from connecting in a simple way.
iMessage and Vision Pro in the crosshairs
When it comes to messaging, Zuckerberg accuses Apple of doing everything to lock users into a form of protectionism and of creating frustration among younger generations, particularly those who would dare to use an Android device:
With iMessage, they implemented a blue bubble and a green bubble. For children, it’s a bit like they’re embarrassing you, isn’t it? They say if you don’t have a blue bubble, you’re not cool and you’re apart, and they always put you under protection.
The founder of Meta was also asked about the Vision Prowhich he considers technically better thanks to super sharp screens
but which are limited – according to him – to a technological demonstration for wealthy people:
They offered something around $3,500, which is worse than what we did for $300 or $400. So clearly this wasn’t going to work very well. It’s a good technology company. I think their second and third versions will probably be better than their first version. I think the Vision Pro is one of the biggest innovations they’ve tried in a while.
Despite a few good words, Mark Zuckerberg was logically quite temperate about Apple, which obviously remains a partner of choice for Meta. If you watch the entire interview, the man still seems to have a lot of admiration for the Apple company, on which he readily admits that most of its products and services are dependent on it. Business is business
as they say at Uncle Sam’s.
And you ? What do you think?
