Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg joined the Joe Rogan Experience podcast today for a wide-ranging interview on content moderation, the Trump administration, and Apples apparent lack of innovation. Mark Zuckerberg joins Joe Rogan Zuckerberg has long been an outspoken critic of App Store policies and Apples privacy protections. In this interview with Rogan, the Meta CEO claimed that the 15-30% fees Apple charges for the App Store are a way for the company to mask slowing iPhone sales. According to Zuckerberg, Apple hasnt really invented anything great in a while and is just sitting on the iPhone:[Apple has] used the [iPhone] to put in place a lot of rules that I think it feel arbitrary. I feel like they havent really invented anything great in a while. Its like Steve Jobs invented the iPhone and now theyre just kind of sitting on it 20 years later.Acutally, I think, year over year, Im not even sure theyre selling more iPhones at this point. I think like the sales might actually be declining. Part of it is that each generation doesnt actually get that much better. So people are just taking longer to upgrade than they would before. So the number of sales, I think, has generally been flat to declining. So how are they making more money as a company?Well, they do it by basically like squeezing people and having this 30 percent tax on developers.Zuckerberg also took issue with AirPods and the fact that Apple wouldnt give Meta the same access to the iPhone for its Meta Ray-Ban glasses: They build stuff like AirPods, which are cool, but theyve just thoroughly hamstrung the ability for anyone else to build something that can connect to the iPhone in the same way.There were a lot of other companies in the world that would be able to build like a very good earbud, but Apple has a specific protocol that theyve built into the iPhone that allows AirPods to basically connect to it.Its just much more seamless because theyve enabled that, but they dont let anyone else use the protocol. If they did, there would probably be much better competitors to AirPods out there.And whenever you push on this, they get super touchy and they basically wrap their defense of it in, well, if we let other companies plug into our thing, then that would violate peoples privacy and security. Its like, no, just do a better job designing the protocol.We basically asked them for the Ray-Ban meta glasses that we built, can we basically use the protocol that you use for AirPods and some of these other things to just make it so we can as easily connect? So its not like a pain in the ass for people who wanna use this? And I think one of the protocols theyve used that they built, they basically didnt encrypt it. So its like plain text. And theyre like, well, we cant have you plug into it because it would be insecure.Its like, its insecure because you didnt build any security into it. And then now youre using that as a justification for why only your product can connect in an easy way.Zuckerberg, however, said hes optimistic that Apple will get beat by someone sooner rather than later because theyve been off their game in terms of not releasing innovative things. He went on to express his concern that one day, Apple will release its take on the Meta Ray-Ban smart glasses with the key advantage of better integration with the iPhone. Bloomberg has reported that Apple is working on its own pair of smart glasses. The conversation then pivoted to iMessage and Apples use of blue bubbles as a way to embarrass kids: The whole thing that theyve done with iMessage, they do this whole blue bubble, green bubble thing. For kids, its just sort of like, they embarrass you, right?Theyre like, if you dont have a blue bubble, youre not cool, and youre like the out crowd, and then they always wrap it in like security.Rogan and Zuckerberg then detoured into a segment where they awkwardly Googled to determine if RCS was encrypted for iPhone users. Apple, of course, added support for RCS as part of iOS 18 last year. The answer: its not. RCS Universal Profile, the standard currently published by the GSM Association, does not support encryption. Apple has said it is working with GMSA to improve the security and encryption of RCS messages rather than build its own proprietary flavor of end-to-end encryption for RCS. And finally, Vision Pro: They shipped something for $3,500 that I think is worse than the thing that we shipped for $300 or $400. So, that clearly was not gonna work very well.Theyre a good technology company. I think their second and third version will probably be better than their first version. I think the Vision Pro is I think one of the bigger swings at doing a new thing that they tried in a while.9to5Macs TakeZuckerberg has been busy implementing new dehumanizing content guidelines on Facebook, Instagram, and Threads this week. Im surprised he could find time in his schedule to sit down with Rogan for this 3-hour interview. Let us also not forget that Meta has never invented anything great. Oculus was an acquisition, WhatsApp was an acquisition, Instagram was an acquisition, and intermixed with those acquisitions are features copied and pasted from other platforms.As for Apple Vision Pro, Metafired up its photocopiersright as Vision Pro launched tomimicApples innovative spatial computing design paradigms. The company has also rolled outupgraded hand trackingand gestures,spatial video support, and more. The Apple Vision Pros influence is clear, even if Zuck thinks the Quest is a better product. Add 9to5Mac to your Google News feed. 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