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Flipboard CEO Mike McCue.
In an interview at Recode's Code Media conference on Tuesday, he said that Apple's alternative to his own product is "living in the past."
Apple News launched in 2015, and raked in some 70 million monthly active users (MAUs); Flipboard, on the other hand, hovers around 100 million MAUs.
Flipboard first launched in 2010, however, which means that Apple News has grown much faster, getting 70% of its rival's users in less than half the time.
"When you're an entrepreneur and you're competing with Apple, that's a pretty big deal," McCue said, adding that Apple is "a partner and a competitor at the same time."
He made clear his position on Apple News, which he believes to have at least three glaring issues.
For one, he said, there is "no social" sharing capability. He then lamented that "there's no curation happening, it's all algorithmic"; and then pointed towards Apple News' very architecture, which is yet "another format that publishers have to adopt."
"We're not trying to create a closed ecosystem," he said. "And that's a big deal for publishers."