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Zuckerberg believes Apple “[hasn’t] really invented anything great in a while…”

January 11, 2025  •  3 min read

Appearing on Joe Rogan’s podcast, this week, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said that Apple “[hasn’t] really invented anything great in a while.”

Steve Jobs invented the iPhone and now they’re just kind of sitting on it 20 years later.

Let’s take a look at some hard metrics, shall we?

I did a search of the USPTO site for patents filed by Apple and Meta since 2007. In that time period, Apple filed for 44,699 patents. Meta, nee Facebook, filed for 4,839, or about 10% of Apple’s inventions.

These images show two side-by-side screenshots of the USPTO Patent Public Search interface (version 3.0.22). The left image shows a search query for "apple inc" patents filed since 2007, which returned 44,699 results. The right image shows a search query for "facebook technologies" OR "meta platforms technologies" patents filed since 2007, which returned 4,839 results. Both interfaces display patent search results in a table format showing document IDs and publication dates from January 2025, with various search options and filters visible in the interface, including database selections (US-PGPUB, USPAT, USOCR) and search preferences like plurals and British equivalents.

You can argue that not all companies file for patents for everything, or that Zuck said Apple hasn’t “really invented anything great in a while.” Great being the keyword here.

He left out the following “great” Apple inventions since 2007:

  • App Store (2008)
  • iPad (2010)
  • Apple Pay (2014)
  • Swift (2014)
  • Apple Watch (2015)
  • AirPods (2016)
  • Face ID (2017)
  • Neural engine SoC (2017)
  • SwiftUI (2019)
  • Apple silicon (2020)
  • Vision Pro (2023) [arguable, since it wasn’t a commercial success, but definitely a technical feat]

The App Store, I’d argue, is on the same level as the iPhone because it opened up an entire new economy for developers, resulting in an astounding $935 billion market in 2025. Apple Watch might be a close second, kicking off a $38 billion market for smartwatches.

Let’s think about Meta’s since 2007, excluding acquisitions*:

  • Facebook Messenger (2011)
  • React (2013)
  • React Native (2015)
  • GraphQL (2015)
  • PyTorch (2016)
  • Ray-Ban Stories (2021)
  • Llama (2023)

*Yes, excluding acquisitions, as Zuckerberg is talking about inventions. That’s why WhatsApp, Instagram, and Quest are not included. Anything I’m missing on this list?

As you can see, other than Messenger and the Ray-Ban glasses, the rest of Meta’s inventions are aimed at developers, not consumers. I’m being a little generous.

Update 1/12/2025

I’ve added some products to the lists above based on some replies to my Threads post. I also added a sentence to clarify excluding acquisitions.

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