Founder of secure messaging app Telegram says iOS is stuck in the 'Middle Ages'
Often described as the Russian Mark Zuckerberg, the billionaire and tech visionary Pavel Durov, founder of secure messaging app Telegram, has just burst out with a rant against Apple saying that every time he uses an iPhone he feels "thrown back into the Middle Ages" and criticizes the company for locking down customers and turning them into "digital slaves".
The strong reaction comes after a New York Times investigation revealed a relationship between Apple and China, and particularly how Apple was allegedly instrumental in "large-scale surveillance and censorship at the behest of China." Durov published the rant in his own Telegram channel, followed by nearly 600,000 people.
In the rant, he criticized the company for a dishonorable business model of "selling overpriced, obsolete hardware to customers locked in their ecosystem", but added that this "obsolete" hardware is not the real problem.
He lashed out at Apple saying that the worst part of the company is that it does not allow users to install apps from other sources than its own App Store and that you cannot use other service than iCloud to back up your device.
Durov is not only a tech founder, but also a strong voice against totalitarian governments. Not least because he himself was a victim of what was effectively a government takeover.
He founded Russian social network VK in the 2000s, and much like Facebook, it quickly grew to millions of users (VK currently has over 100 million users and its popularity is waning). However, in 2014, after years of fighting takeover attempts from billionaires close to Putin, he was forced to sell his stake in VK and eventually fled Russia, effectively surrendering the independence and control over the social network to the Russian Government.
You can read Durov's comments on Apple in their entirety below:
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