Mark Zuckerberg has joined Elon Musk in publicly railing against Apple and particularly its App Store policies.
As reported by CNBC, at The New York Times DealBook summit on Wednesday, the Meta CEO was asked about his thoughts on the App Store and its 30% commission. Unsurprisingly, Zuckerberg didn't have particularly nice things to say about Apple.
When it came to the company's policies surrounding the App Store, Zuckerberg said that “Apple has sort of singled themselves out as the only company that is trying to control unilaterally what apps get on a device. I don’t think that’s a sustainable or good place to be.”
He pointed out the contrast between iOS with Android, which does allow users to sideload apps (albeit with some friction from Google). Zuckerberg said that “they’ve always made it so you can sideload and have other app stores and work directly with phone manufacturers. That’s also been our commitment in how we built up our VR and what we plan to do with our AR headsets.”
Facebook and Twitter are just a handful of companies that have had public or legal battles with Apple over its App Store policies and commission rates. Epic and Spotify are also in ongoing disputes with the company.
Zuckerberg also had words for Elon Musk
The Meta CEO was also asked about his thoughts on Elon Musk, who just recently launched an attack against Apple's App Store policies. Musk even met with Apple CEO Tim Cook this week, likely to speak directly about the dispute.
Zuckerberg shied away from agreeing with Musk's brash approach in his fight against Apple, saying that “it’s going to be very interesting to see how this plays out in terms of the approaches he’s taking. I would guess that not everything is going to work, but I think some things might work."
On the issue of content moderation, which is also something Musk is complaining to Apple about, the Meta CEO said that “I tend to think that I don’t want one person or one company making those decisions, which is why we pioneered this oversight board for our content decisions. People have a vehicle that they can appeal to outside of us.”
