Musk says spat with Apple over App Store ejection threat for Twitter was 'misunderstanding'

The one-sided battle of the billionaires is over before it really began, with Elon Musk saying his spat with Apple boss Tim Cook over perceived threats to remove Twitter from the App Store was a “misunderstanding” Musk claimed earlier this week that Apple was going to "withhold" the social media platform's app from its digital …

[Tom 38]

Apple has sort of singled themselves out as the only company that is trying to control, like unilaterally, what apps get on a device. I don't think that's a sustainable or good place to be.

How do I get apps on to an Oculus? Who gets to decide?

(OK, its a bit facetious, as you can pop the device in developer mode and sideload apps, but still)

[Stuart Castle]

RE: Apple has sort of singled themselves out as the only company that is trying to control, like unilaterally, what apps get on a device. I don't think that's a sustainable or good place to be.

Not sure about that. Depends how the platform owners handle it. While it *is* nice to be able to install what apps I want, when I last jailbroke my phone, I found there wasn't much on Cydia (IIRC) that I actually wanted to installed that didn't have an equivalent on the App Store. The system has proved relatively effective at keeping malware off the platform. It's not perfect, and some has got through.

The concern I have is Apple starts censoring the content for certain points of view. Elon pretty much implied they were doing that, although I'd argue the fact that when he said that, they had Truth Social (and likely Gab and Parler as well) available on the App Store, as well as the fact they talked to Elon implies they don't do this currently.

[NerryTutkins]

Apple is perfectly entitled to set the rules for what kind of content is acceptable on its app store. Musk is rather pathetic in the way he marshals his fanboys to join in attacking whoever he decides is thwarting his right-wing agenda.

Has anyone noticed the same people who call Musk "Elon" and claim to be free speech absolutists are also absolutely sure that bakeries should be able to refuse to put gay stuff on cakes for same sex weddings and footballers shouldn't take a knee or wear rainbow armbands.

There is absolutely nothing morally no legally that requires Apple to carry right wing hate speech, or Musk's childish ramblings. Similarly, there should be nothing stopping a bakery refusing to ice a cake if it doesn't want to.

[TheTick]

"Has anyone noticed the same people who call Musk "Elon" and claim to be free speech absolutists are also absolutely sure that bakeries should be able to refuse to put gay stuff on cakes for same sex weddings and footballers shouldn't take a knee or wear rainbow armbands."

There is nothing inconsistent with any of those three viewpoints in any way whatsoever.

But you're clearly an absolute loon if you think Elon has a right-wing agenda. Freedom of speech isn't right wing, left wing or centre - it's Liberty.

[kat_bg]

Musk cares about freedom of speech only when suits him. Ask his employees if they have freedom of speech, especially when their opinions goe against his

[Anonymous Coward]

Just ask the people who satirised the snowflake.

[KittenHuffer]

Much more fun if they'd satyr-ised him!

[Anonymous Coward]

But you're clearly an absolute loon if you think Elon has a right-wing agenda.

Umm, Elon Musk, Elon Musk, let me think. Isn't that the guy who told his followers to vote for the party that has pretty much ruined what was left of the US? Yes, I think that's the one. Pedo guy, no?

Not so loony after all then, but equipped with a better memory..

[TheTick]

No, he said they should vote Republican not Democrat.

Memory a little fuzzy there fella, sure sign of lunacy.

[Khaptain]

Elon Musk voted for Biden .

Now he is supporting Desantis.

I call that free choice .

[Anonymous Coward]

I call that opportunism.

[Strahd Ivarius]

You can't on one side argue that bakeries have a right to free speech (they are not people) and on the other side deny it to footballers.

[Khaptain]

Last I looked bakeries were run by people.

[Oh Matron!]

Tim was clear that Apple never considered doing so.

or, to put it another way:

"I had a paddy, lost all concept of rational thought and had a bout of verbal diarrhea"

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Tim was clear that Apple never considered doing so.

That made me laugh much harder than it ought to - have an upvote

[Yet Another Anonymous coward]

Re: Tim was clear that Apple never considered doing so.

Or he thought he was getting in ahead of a potential ban.

Much easier to get the public mad about an imagined ban to give Apple pause for thought than it is to create a momentum about forcing Apple to change their mind afterwards

[MrDamage]

Re: Tim was clear that Apple never considered doing so.

Even easier when the targetted fanbase has a known history of getting upset over imagined slights.

[trevorde]

Transcript of conversation

[Tim Cook] We would never 'withhold' the Twitter app. In fact, we love it!

[Elon Musk] Uh, OK...

[TC] And, Elon?

[EM] Yes?

[TC] You look like 5h17 and you smell like a dumpster fire

[--phone rings, TC looks at it--]

[TC] Sorry, I have to take this one. It's 'The Register'. Probably asking for a comment.

[cookieMonster]

Re: Transcript of conversation

One of best comments of 2022, have a pint !!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Elon Trump Junior

Yeah, unsuccessful lies, false accusations, missinformation, etc. often end up as 'misunderstanding'

[chivo243]

Re: Elon Trump Junior

Me and Mini-Me? No?

The school of say what you want, when you want, and back peddle like hell when you're called on your BS.

[General Purpose]

Gaslighting 101

Always "the misunderstanding", never "my misunderstanding".

[Charlie Clark]

Re: Gaslighting 101

More like PR Whore 101: do whatever it takes to get a headline.

[Dantist]

'misunderstanding'

My English must be a little rusty. I thought it was spelled 'I'm a complete moron'.

[TeeCee]

Yes, but...

Just wait until the Apple Mind Control(tm) wears off.

[Totally not a Cylon]

Re: Yes, but...

Oh it doesn't.

Once we have indoctrinated someone into the cult of Apple they can never leave.......

if they try, we go all goudere on them......

[Baudwalk]

Re: Yes, but...

>>>if they try, we go all goudere on them......<<<

Mildly cheesy?

[Totally not a Cylon]

Re: Yes, but...

That would be Gouda.......

Goudere is like Tohra from Miss Kobayashi's Dragon Maid.......

[that one in the corner]

The Stepford Musk

The Apple robotics[1] team clearly has the edge over Optimus.

[1] Spoiler alert

[NerryTutkins]

pedo

Let's not forget that thanks to Musk's antics in court, and his enthusiasm for free speech, we can quite legally say Elon Musk is a pedo boy, and not get sued.

[First Light]

Re: pedo

Please don't reuse his ridiculously juvenile, white S African nasty slur. The phrase doesn't deserve repeating.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: pedo

Juvenile definitely applies, but it has no bearing on him being white or from SA.

I know nicer people from there, like Mark Shuttleworth (the guy who handed quite a chunk of the profits of the sale of his company to Verisign to his staff).

[First Light]

Re: pedo

My point, and I admit to using a lazy shortcut, is that the phrase is the product of the toxic white supremacist culture in which Musk grew up.

[HkraM]

he retweeted a parody of Apple's 1984 video

"he retweeted a parody of Apple's 1984 video"

Why wasn't Musk banned from Twitter for this? Did he clearly label his account as a parody account first?

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: he retweeted a parody of Apple's 1984 video

I think you have hit on THE current key problem for Twitter:

The one account that SHOULD be banned cannot, as it's the owner's..

[amanfromMars 1]

Re: he retweeted a parody of Apple's 1984 video

I think you have hit on THE current key problem for Twitter:

The one account that SHOULD be banned cannot, as it's the owner's.. ..... Anonymous Coward

If you think a tad further and deeper and higher, AC, that is a concurrent key problem in all established and many alternative to main stream media channels too, communicating and connecting with your senses to influence and lead your perception and redirect your attention and elicit a gain of function in an as easily a subversive activity as not.

The one account that SHOULD be banned, for it surely can be but isn’t rather than cannot be, is that and/or those of their owners whenever FUD and Doom and Gloom are their corrupting staple and default controlling presentations.

That is why 1984 hasn’t gone away, you know, no matter what Apple Macintoshes might say ... but it is gladly failing badly in radical and revolutionary leading IT and AI spectaculars.

[Howard Sway]

Among other things, we resolved the misunderstanding

Hmmm, the rapid transformation from big gobshite into a lame tame musk looks rather too sudden for this to be the real story. It seems a lot more likely that he was told what would happen if he carried on insulting the platform that millions of people use to access twitter, possibly including a fully featured demo of a ready-to-go replacement service, or at least a projected loss of revenue if he were to be shut out, and had to do plenty of grovelling and promise not to insult them again in order to stop these consequences.

It must have been quite interesting to see how he behaves in a rare for him scenario where he's not the person with the most power, but the "even the offices were nice!" stuff is a clue that he's realised this is a fight he can't afford. So, it looks like there are some people who have some control over what he's able to say after all...........

[thejoelr]

Re: Among other things, we resolved the misunderstanding

Yeah. He skipped details on if he was going to pay Apple's normal rate for in-app purchases. Also, this is all coming from one side, so he gets the chance to bend the truth. Must have also been nice to visit a workplace that wasn't a ghost town.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Among other things, we resolved the misunderstanding

.. without people sleeping under their desks as they have to clock stupid hours to avoid being sacked.

That's partly because Apple knows damn well that the extra time you get out of people that way you lose twice in the amount of bug fixing and rework that tired people cause.

Given that Tesla's have been known to leave the factory with trivial problems such as a roof not fitted or panel gaps last seen so wide on Russian Ladas it appears it ain't working for the other Musk managed hardware places either. It'll be interesting to have that in the back of your mind as the next astronaut going up with Space X made rockets..

[TheTick]

I wonder....

I wonder if you Musk-hating chaps (who probably were licking his balls 12 months ago for his electric car and space exploration firms) will ever take a moment to reflect on why you now hate that same person simply because he thinks freedom of speech is important enough for him to buy a multibillion dollar company?

Or are you just pissed off that you can't look at all the underage porn that the "Trust and safety team" ignored for years and he's finally removed from that cesspit of a platform Twitter now?

[anonymous boring coward]

Re: I wonder....

I don't wonder about any of that, since you made it up.

[TheTick]

Re: I wonder....

"I don't wonder about any of that, since you made it up."

Which part? The underage porn part? Because that's well known and Musk says it's his priority #1

https://foreigndesknews.com/trending/elon-musk-fighting-child-pornography-on-twitter-is-priority-1/

- On Saturday, human trafficking survivor and advocate Eliza Bleu noted that the three biggest hashtags for selling CSE on Twitter had been “virtually eliminated.”

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: I wonder....

I may have some bad news for you.

You don't solve the child porn issue by calling everyone who disagrees with you a peadophile. That creates just a tad too many false positives, especially if you're a rather disagreeable manchild to start with. Just FYI.

[TheTick]

Re: I wonder....

But you do fix it by buying the social media company that has been spreading that filth for years, while the people who are supposed to be stopping it are wasting their time banning people who dare to say that chicks don't have dicks, and clean house.

So tell me, anonymous coward, what are you hiding from?

[TheTick]

Re: I wonder....

I knew El Reg comments section had become a complete waste of space, but all thumbs down on a post with evidence that Musk has cleaned up a massive child porn problem on one of the biggest social media companies....?

Jesus, this place is dodgy as fu*k I remember why I've stayed away for years now.

[genghis_uk]

Re: I wonder....

<quote>I remember why I've stayed away for years now</qoute>

You could try it again and we will see if we miss you... don't let the door hit you on the way out

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: I wonder....

don't let the door hit you on the way out

Actually, please do.

:)

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: I wonder....

What are the new hashtags?

asking for a friend...

[anonymous boring coward]

Re: I wonder....

Wasn't Trump also fighting the pizza making pedos?

I don't read that kind of shit.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: I wonder....

Man, you must be on some serious medication.

And no, I would never buy a Tesla. Not even because Musk is involved, it's just not serviced well in Europe. I like a car manufacturer with garages you can go to when stuff doesn't work (I also like the speedometer right in front of me and mechanical buttons, but I digress). As for Space X, well done, that shows that Musk can get things done when kept away from the public and surrounded by good people who keep it that way.

Which isn't the case with Twitter, QED..

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: I wonder....

I don't know why changing your mind on something based on new information is seen as such a bad thing. A year ago lots more people probably liked him. He's had a year of doing a lot of objectionable things. People now know more about him and rightly changed their opinions. Those horrible people.

[TheTick]

Re: I wonder....

"I don't know why changing your mind on something based on new information is seen as such a bad thing"

Correct, I wasn't much of a Musk fan until this year when he has made it clear that the governments and corporations limiting perfectly normal and correct speech such as "There are only two genders and a man cannot become a woman" must be stopped.

What information about Musk have you found out this year which compares to the reintroduction of free speech to one of the most significant online public squares in the world?

[MrDamage]

Re: I wonder....

So, while he was building electric cars with Democrats and environmentalists as the target market, you didn't like him. But when he started courting racists, homophobes, and child predators, you became a fan. Got it.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: I wonder....

At that rate he might as well become the fourth user on Truth :)

[TheTick]

Re: I wonder....

Another idiot claiming Musk has something to do with child predators, despite him being the only reason child porn is being wiped from the twitter cesspit right now.

Got any sources for your lies?

[MrDamage]

Re: I wonder....

1) Elon tweets about becoming republican (May 18, 2022).

2) Elon tweets his followers should vote for republicans (Nov 7, 2022).

3) https://goppredators.wordpress.com/

[MrDamage]

Re: I wonder....

It has nothing to do with freedom of speech. It has EVERYTHING to do with his hypocrisy, lying, and flagrant disregard for, well, anyone but himself.

Well, it sort of has something to do with freedom of speech. The more he opens his mouth and spouts utter douchebaggery, the more we come to realise he has always been like this, just was being effectively handled by PR managers before. Now, he's acting like a spoiled brat, telling everyone we can;'t tell him what to do (even though he goes out of the way to antagonise people), and when he gets caught out in his own lies, he doubles down and tries to gaslight the world into believing it was always the opposite.

And, just like Musk, and all republicans, whenever you feel threatened, your first response is to accuse the opposition of being a pedophile. An insult that would be the furthest thing from most rational minds, yet here you are, with child sexual abuse at the forefront of your mind. YOUR mind. Not ours. YOURS. What is it with right-wingers and their fascination with child sexual abuse? Why is it ALWAYS the first thing on their minds?

https://goppredators.wordpress.com/

[chivo243]

Let's think about this...

So, Elon farts in Apple's general direction on his newly acquired internet megaphone. Gets some press, gets invited(?) to visit TC. Struts into the meeting like cock of the walk, later after the meeting, he laughs it off as a misunderstanding, something taken out of context, and now he's marching in line like a good little soldier.

What would motivate a man to change so suddenly? Especially someone as bold as Elon?

Blackmail\extortion? We have the pics!

A quick look at his real financial situation, as I'm sure Apple can get the info they need.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Let's think about this...

I think Tim Cook calmly laid out the facts, and as there was no press present and probably no WiFi to keep him off Twitter it may have been possible that he for once paid attention to anyone but himself with clearly dramatic consequences for his rhetoric.

Not that that will last, of course. I give it 24h, tops.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Let's think about this...

What, Apple had a look at all the pedo files on EM"s iPhone?

This is a breach of privacy!

[Throatwarbler Mangrove]

I'm not a huge Apple fan, but the reality is that Apple makes actual products which people pay for. Twitter does not. In a financial cage match between Tim Apple and Twitter Me Elmo, I have no doubt that the latter would get slapped around like Pee Wee Herman in a biker bar.

[TheTick]

Have you heard of SpaceX and Tesla?

Quite substantial actual products that are massively more useful than another phone with a crappy locked ecosystem.

[thejoelr]

It said twitter. When the app store controls access to spacex or tesla, then it may apply.

[TheTick]

"It" said the following:

"In a financial cage match between Tim Apple and Twitter Me Elmo, I have no doubt that the latter would get slapped around like Pee Wee Herman in a biker bar."

The richest guy in the world who built an entire space industry and an electric car industry up against a phone salesman....I'll go for the guy who can send one of his cars strapped to one of his rockets past the orbit of Mars.

[Anonymous Coward]

It was not a Musk vs. Cook fight, it was a Twitter vs. Apple (Store) one. SpaceX or Tesla or whatever else are completely irrelevant here, except maybe as chest-pounding material.

You're entitled to be in love with the guy, it takes all sorts to make a world, but try to be honest.

[Anonymous Coward]

Given the quality and reliability problems at Tesla I'd call those at best occasionally useful.

Apparently even Range Rovers score better.

[kat_bg]

Tesla allows third party repairs? Do they offer possibility to replace cells in the battery thus not replacing the whole unit? No? Then they are not better

[Anonymous Coward]

In a financial cage match between Tim Apple and Twitter Me Elmo, I have no doubt that the latter would get slapped around like Pee Wee Herman in a biker bar.

Best visual ever, thanks :)

[Mitoo Bobsworth]

Musk says...

... a lot of stuff - mostly for attention.

[mark l 2]

Its a pity that we aren't going to see 'Pedo Guy' vs 'Tim Apple' since they have kissed and made up, as I was wondering what would happen if Elon followers went up against Apple fanatics as to who would win the flame war?

[John Brown (no body)]

"who would win the flame war?"

No one. At best a Pyrrhic[*] victory for both sides, not that there'd be anyone left standing at the end. There's no way Apple fanbois or Musk fanbois would ever either admit defeat or moderate their opinions. It'll be a total carnage death-match literally to the last fanboi, who will be so exhausted they will probably die from wounds received thus allowing the world to become a slightly better and saner place.

[*] See what I did there? Flame war. Pyrric victory. Yeah? Nah? Never mind then, pretend it never happened. It was just a misunderstanding.

[Alumoi]

Humanity?

[Fruit and Nutcase]

Piranha Persuasion

I imagine Musk's audience with Tim Cook at Apple HQ went something like this

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TbTuutqZkWI

Just another notch up in the charm offensive - gets errant billionaires under control

[Handy Plough]

Musk is basically the Boris Johnson of tech.

[Fruit and Nutcase]

Musk is ahead of Johnson in the number of offspring... 10, compared to, a reported 7 for Johnson, but I think no one is sure of the exact number, including himself.

[Anonymous Coward]

A bunch of cults

Twitter

Apple

Facebook

Etc

Lead by cult leaders.

Best avoided if possible.

[Handy Plough]

Re: A bunch of cults

You missed off:

FSF (Stallman)

Linux (Linus)

Both lead by cult leaders too...

[Handy Plough]

Re: A bunch of cults

Ooh, hit a bit of a raw nerve with the FOSS cultists. Pathetic.

[Anonymous Coward]

“TheTick”

Is that you Elon?

[Kevin McMurtrie]

Apple tour

Did it include the secret iCar factory?