If Mark Zuckerberg’s new laid-back look—complete with shaggy hair and chunky gold chain—is any indication, he’s much different from the straightlaced, crew-cutted Apple CEO Tim Cook. It’s no wonder, then, that the business philosophies of Zuckerberg’s Meta and Apple are as different as their two leaders. Zuckerberg has been eager to point out those differences and prod at a decades-long feud between the two tech giants and their chief executives.
While Meta has prioritized acting fast and engaging users, such as through its open-sourcing of its Llama AI model, Zuckerberg said in the Acquired podcast episode released Tuesday, Apple prefers maintaining a closed ecosystem of polished, exclusive products.
"I think in a lot of ways we're like the opposite of Apple," he said. "Clearly, their stuff has worked really well too. They take this approach that's like, 'We're going to take a long time, we're going to polish it, we're going to put it out,' and maybe for the stuff that they're doing that works, maybe that just fits with their culture."
Since Tim Cook took the helm of the tech behemoth, Apple has prided itself on being the best, rather than the first. For the most part, it’s worked out for the company, demonstrated by its superlative of the world's largest smartphone provider. Apple has long tended to its walled garden of in-house products, which has resulted in a uniform line of apps and accessories bespoke to its tech—and a whopping antitrust lawsuit from the Department of Justice.
But Zuckerberg touted Meta’s own spaghetti-at-the-wall approach to its products, which he believes has elicited helpful critiques and enabled the company to grow in spite of its failures.
"You want to really have a culture that values shipping and getting things out and getting feedback more than needing always to get great positive accolades from people when you put stuff out," he said.
There’s certainly been no shortage of feedback toward Meta, exemplified by social media platform Thread’s meteoric rise to 100 million users, only for the number of accounts to atrophy weeks later. Its flagship Metaverse was a $46.5 billion failure, but that still hasn’t stopped Zuckerberg from adding $58 billion to his net worth this year.
Apple’s perfectionism has been at its own expense, Zuckerberg said, arguing the company prioritizes praise above constructive feedback from users.
"If you want to wait until you get praised all the time,” he said, “you're missing a bunch of the time when you could've learned a bunch of useful stuff and then incorporated that into the next version you're going to ship.”
Apple and Meta did not immediately respond to Fortune’s requests for comment.
Billionaires butting heads
Zuckerberg’s commentary on Apple’s ways of doing business is not the first time he’s shared his thoughts on Cook’s company. For over a decade, he and Cook have differed on their philosophies not only on how to roll out products, but on the future of the internet more broadly.
Earlier this month Meta and Apple’s feud reached a fever pitch after Meta urged greater government regulation of social media platforms, suggesting Apple and Google set age restrictions and requirements for parental consent. But Apple disagreed, arguing the onus for restrictions should be placed on the platform themselves.
Tensions between the two companies have been tightening since 2014, when Cook suggested Facebook made its money through the collection of personal data. The following year, Apple unveiled its motto, “Privacy is a fundamental human right.” Cook also lambasted Facebook as a hotbed for Russian misinformation used to mislead American voters ahead of the 2016 election.
Zuckerberg seems keen on fanning the flames of the tech rivalry today, calling Apple Meta’s “primary competitor” on Tuesday’s podcast. Cook historically has not agreed.
"Oh, I think that we compete in some things," Cook said in 2021. "But no, if I may ask who our biggest competitors are, they would not be listed. We're not in the social networking business."
