Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg blasted Apple during a companywide meeting to more than 50,000 employees via webcast on Thursday, saying that Apple’s App Store “blocks innovation, blocks competition,” and ““allows Apple to charge monopoly rents.”
Zuckerberg’s comments were another signal that there’s no love lost in the long-contentious relationship between the leader of the social network and the $2 trillion electronic device maker.
On Thursday, Apple refused to allow Facebook to notify people that the iPhone maker would collect 30% of in-app purchases made through a new feature on the Facebook app that lets businesses sell tickets to online events on the platform. After Apple told Facebook that a notification was “irrelevant information,” the social network was forced to scrub the message out of its app before Apple let the feature through.
Earlier this month, Apple also made Facebook strip a feature called Instant Games from Facebook Gaming, an app that primarily lets people watch other people playing video games.
Zuckerberg also criticized a change in Apple’s upcoming iOS 14 operating system for iPhones and iPads that would make it much harder for companies like Facebook to target people using those devices with ads.
Facebook has posted a video of the meeting here: https://www.facebook.com/zuck/videos/10112235089045271
MacDailyNews Take: Since Apple does not have a monopoly in any market in which they participate, there is no legal basis for antitrust action against Apple, as Zuckerberg ought to know.
So, there is no monopoly (which is legal by the way), much less monopoly abuse (which is explicitly impossible given the nonexistence of a monopoly). You cannot abuse a monopoly and therefore face antitrust action when you do not have a monopoly to begin with.
Worldwide smartphone OS market share, May 2020 (via StatCounter:
• Android: 74.60%
• iOS: 24.82%
If the customers didn’t like Apple’s iOS Software License Agreement, they should have opted for a pretend iPhone from any one of a dime-a-dozen handset assemblers. Then they could have blissfully infested their fake iPhones with malware from a variety of sources.
Apple built the Mac. Apple built the iPhone. Apple built the iPad. Apple built the App Store. Apple created the most verdant ecosystem ever created for developers by far. Only the losers and those developers who can’t read and follow simple rules are whining incessantly.
If anything, Apple takes too little of a cut for all that the App Store provides developers. — MacDailyNews, June 21, 2020
Sounds like he is butt hurt over Apple cutting his ad revenue with the next OS. LOL
Facebook is a scourge
There never was a more cynical and thieving company than Facebook that insinuated itself in the American and worldwide fabric. And it thinks of itself as indispensable. Wrong.
Microsoft
Could be and maybe Google.
All in the same category, but I think Facebook creates more chaos, is a greater vehicle to spread lies and create polarization.
I’ve been a Mac user since 1985 and though Microsoft used to be the ultimate enemy, they are now a retired enemy. We are not in competition with them. And they create tools to help people do their thing.
Google, just a creepy business model and constantly creeping into your life as they pretend products.
But Facebook is different. As MDN has said, “look at those dead eyes, like a shark.”;-)
Know how to tell when Zuck is lying? He opens his mouth.
Which shows, yet again, even an ahole can be right!
I do it all the time!
apple cynic your not that bad! Lets just say you make things interesting and keep the debate lively 🙂
Thank you kind person.
I look forward to Zuck allowing twitter to advertise on his platform… Oh that’s right, he’s a lying sack of s**t hypocrite one hit wonder-not.
Self-serving comment.
Does Apple’s App Store block Facebook’s competition/competitors?
Surely auld Zuch is not complaining about that.
hitler was innovative and very competitive against other tyrant leaders. Innovation is not an excuse for evil ways
wow we find a subject we all can agree on !!! everyone bow your head and give thanks 🙂
I want to vomit and if I see Zuckerberg’s name he makes me sick. Piece of shi-
That’s Zuckerberg’s eyes, just to be clear. 😉
Two wrongs don’t make a right. The fact that other companies are abusing their control over the consumer doesn’t prove that Apple isn’t doing the same thing in their own way.
But Apple does bully developers both large and small and will use its army of lawyers to ensure there is no competition and fair play to gain market advantage. Rotten Apple.
Shirley Little Markie knows how bombastically self-serving this sounds and instead of expected weeping violins he “hears” an anechoic chamber in response with the occasional cricket.
As a former editor of the paper-version of Facebook at the high school Zuckerberg attended, I’m embarrassed.
I should be able to reject and call out Zuck to his face, not though Apple. Eff them both!
Talk about the ‘Pot’ calling the ‘Kettle’ names.
Wokes eating Wokes now. Love it. Apple is going to ream out Facebook now, cutting their visits 50%. I call that a good start.
Are you confused? Facebook has been haunted by Putin’s troll farm for years. It’s disinformation comes from all over the political spectrum.
In case you haven’t picked up on it yet, Apple was once the left leaning champion of the underdog but has been transformed by Woke Timmy to be the proud gay sjw liberal beacon of San Fran. How odd that Stevejack tries so hard to cheerlead for a company that shares none of his values.
Not to side with Facebook but a monopoly can be many things. So whilst iOS has a fraction of market share than Android, that doesn’t mean it cannot be construed as a monopoly.
Rather, a company can be deemed a monopoly by their actions. That’s the angle Facebook and Epic are running with ie Apple is acting like a monopoly with their restrictive App Store policies etc.
And at one level Apple isn’t arguing any different. Rather, they’re saying that if the App Store is a monopoly, so too is the PlayStation Store, Microsoft Store, Nintendo Shop etc. That is, if a store can be a monopoly, then there are plenty others to sue as well.
Again, not siding with Facebook et al. But monopoly is a broad term.