Clash of the tech titans: How billionaires Tim Cook and Elon Musk have been needling each other for years even before the new Twitter owner trained his guns on Apple
- Elon Musk pointed the finger at Tim Cook over Apple’s advertising on Twitter
- The pair allegedly rowed before when Musk asked Apple to buy Tesla in 2016
- Apple also poached Musk’s staff and the CEO branded it the ‘Tesla graveyard’
In the heavyweight battle between the world’s richest man and the world’s wealthiest company, there can only be one winner.
Elon Musk has namechecked his latest big-name target in Apple CEO Tim Cook as the Tesla boss continues his Twitter war of words against anyone standing in the way of his ‘free speech’ online utopia.
The tech mogul took issue with the heir to Steve Jobs who exercised his free speech by deciding to ‘mostly stop advertising’ Apple on Twitter.
The tycoon also raged against Apple’s control over the App store, claiming the iPhone maker has threatened to oust his newly-acquired social media platform.
Elon Musk has taken issue with Apple CEO Tim Cook, claiming Twitter could be removed from the App Store
It is not the first time the A-list businessmen have come to blows, with reports of foul-mothed tirades between the rivals who share huge influence and wealth.
The first prod came from Musk who branded Apple the ‘Tesla graveyard’ in 2015 after his employees were lured to the Silicon Valley adversary by offering wage increases and signing bonuses.
The recruits were joining Apple’s secretive ‘Project Titan’ for its own electric car which is still in the works and could upset Tesla’s stranglehold on the market.
Then a year later, the pair had a different version of events about a potential deal for Apple to buy Tesla when it was still in its ascendancy.
Musk allegedly made the generous offer to sell his beloved car company to the tech giant and becomes the new CEO of Apple.
A phone call was said to have taken place between the pair, and Cook reportedly agreed to the purchase of Tesla but refused to allow Musk to become CEO, according to the book Power Play: Tesla, Elon Musk, and the Bet of the Century by The Wall Street Journal reporter Tim Higgins.
The book said: ‘According to a former aide who heard (Musk’s) retelling of the exchange,’ Cook said ‘Fuck you’ before hanging up the phone.’
Musk took issue with Cook (pictured last month) who allegedly has decided to ‘mostly stop advertising’ Apple on Twitter
The billionaire CEO of Twitter and Tesla said Apple was pressuring Twitter over content moderation demands
Musk disputed this account, but did admit: ‘During the darkest days of the Model 3 program, I reached out to Tim Cook to discuss the possibility of Apple acquiring Tesla (for 1/10 of our current value).
‘He refused to take the meeting.’
But Cook hit back saying he had never even spoken with the Tesla founder, completely rubbishing his claims.
He said: ‘You know, I’ve never spoken to Elon, although I have great admiration and respect for the company he’s built.’
Higgins said Musk had ‘plenty of opportunities’ to correct the story in his book and the report of the encounter with Cook ‘comes from Musk’s own account of the conversation, according to people who heard the retelling at the time’.
The author also said the alleged conversation with the Apple boss was ‘told inside Tesla as the company struggled with the Model X.’
At a meeting with staff at Twitter’s San Francisco HQ (pictured) on Monday, Musk presented several features that he plans to introduce to Twitter going forward
Top brands to pull ads in the wake of Musk’s $44B Twitter buyout
- Abbott Laboratories
- Allstate Corporation
- AMC Networks
- American Express Company
- AT&T
- Big Heart Petcare
- BlackRock, Inc.
- BlueTriton Brands, Inc.
- Boston Beer Company
- CA Lottery (California State Lottery)
- CenturyLink (Lumen Technologies, Inc.)
- Chanel
- Chevrolet*
- Chipotle Mexican Grill, Inc.
- Citigroup, Inc.
- CNN
- Dell
- Diageo
- DirecTV
- Discover Financial Services
- Fidelity
- First National Realty Partners
- Ford
- Heineken N.V.
- Hewlett-Packard (HP)
- Hilton Worldwide
- Inspire Brands, Inc.
- Jeep
- Kellogg Company
- Kohl’s Department Stores, Inc.
- Kyndryl
- LinkedIn Corporation
- MailChimp (The Rocket Science Group)
- Marriott International, Inc.
- Mars Petcare
- Mars, Incorporated
- Merck & Co. (Merck Sharp & Dohme MSD)
- Meta Platforms, Inc. (formerly Facebook, Inc.)
- MoneyWise (Wise Publishing, Inc.)
- Nestle
- Novartis AG
- Pernod Ricard
- PlayPass
- The Coca-Cola Company
- The Kraft Heinz Company
- Tire Rack
- Verizon
- Wells Fargo
- Whole Foods Market IP
- Yum! Brands
But the row rolled on, and Musk claimed in July the following year that Cook’s refusal to take the meeting cost Apple $640billion.
He then admitted: ‘Cook and I have never spoken or written to each other ever.
‘There was a point where I requested to meet with Cook to talk about Apple buying Tesla. There were no conditions of acquisition proposed whatsoever.
‘He refused to meet. Tesla was worth about six per cent of today’s value.’
At the time, Tesla was worth $680billion, up from around the $40billion in 2016 when it was struggling to scale up and maintain production levels.
Last November, Cook was asked again about the claims Musk approached him to buy Apple.
He said: ‘You know, I’ve never spoken to Elon. And there are lots of companies out there that we could’ve bought at different times probably. But I feel really good about where we are today.’
CNBC’s Andrew Ross Sorkin Sorkin asked: ‘Did you know he was trying to get to you?’
Cook replied: ‘I don’t remember it being like that. But he said that he did, and so I assume that that’s correct.’
Musk and Cook may have both risen to the top of their companies but both have very different temperaments and politics.
Cook, who is openly gay, tries to avoid any party affiliation and said in 2019 that Apple is ‘probably the most non-political company out there’.
In 2016, he gave money to both parties, likely due to his support of Republican corporate tax cuts and Democrat liberalism.
The tycoon remains tight-lipped about his personal life and said in 2014 he liked to have a ‘basic level of privacy’.
On the other hand, Musk is one of the most outspoken figures in business, sharing his views daily on freedom of speech issues and declaring his support for Republican candidates in the 2022 midterms.
The clash between the titans came to a head Monday when Musk joined the chorus crying foul over a 30 percent fee Apple collects on transactions via its App Store – the sole gateway for applications to get onto its billion plus mobile devices.
A series of tweets fired off by Musk included a meme of a car with his first name on it veering onto a highway off-ramp labeled ‘Go to War,’ instead of continuing onwards towards ‘Pay 30 per cent.’
The billionaire CEO also tweeted that Apple has ‘threatened to withhold Twitter from its App Store, but won’t tell us why.’
Both Apple and Google require social networking services on their app stores to have effective systems for moderating harmful or abusive content.
But since taking over Twitter last month, Musk has cut around half of Twitter’s workforce, including many employees tasked with fighting disinformation, while an unknown number of others have voluntarily quit.
He has also reinstated previously banned accounts, including that of former president Donald Trump.
Elon Musk has alluded to making an ‘alternative phone’ if his social network is permanently banned from both the Apple and Google app stores
Yoel Roth, the former head of trust and safety at Twitter who left after Musk took over, wrote in a New York Times op-ed that ‘failure to adhere to Apple’s and Google’s guidelines would be catastrophic,’ and risk ‘expulsion from their app stores.’
Describing himself as a ‘free speech absolutist,’ Musk believes that all content permitted by law should be allowed on Twitter, and on Monday described his actions as a ‘revolution against online censorship in America.’
He also tweeted that he planned to publish ‘Twitter Files on free speech suppression,’ but without clarifying what data he had in mind to share with the public.
Though Musk says Twitter is seeing record high engagement with him at the helm, his approach has startled the company’s major moneymaker – advertisers.
In recent weeks, half of Twitter’s top 100 advertisers have announced they are suspending or have otherwise ‘seemingly stopped advertising on Twitter,’ an analysis conducted by nonprofit watchdog group Media Matters found.
Musk on Monday accused Apple of also having ‘mostly stopped advertising on Twitter.’
‘Do they hate free speech in America?’ he asked, before replying with a tweet tagging Apple CEO Tim Cook.
In the first three months of 2022, Apple was the top advertiser on Twitter, spending some $48million on ads which accounted for more than 4 per cent of the social media platform’s revenue, according to a Washington Post report citing an internal Twitter document.
Sarah Roberts, an information studies expert at University of California, Los Angeles, told AFP that ‘Musk didn’t understand that Twitter itself was a brand, had cachet.’
‘Now companies don’t even want to be associated with it. It’s not even that they worry about the content. Twitter is a tainted brand, a brand non grata companies don’t want to be associated with,’ she added.
Musk on Monday also called Apple’s fee on transactions through its App Store a ‘secret 30 per cent tax.’
He shared a video released last year by Fortnite maker Epic Games that portrayed Apple as an oppressor in a mocking spin on a famous ‘1984’ ad for Macintosh computers.
Apple has clashed in court with Epic, which has sought to break Apple’s grip on the App Store, accusing the iPhone maker of operating a monopoly in its shop for digital goods or services.
A federal judge last year ordered Apple to loosen control of its App Store payment options, but said Epic had failed to prove that antitrust violations had taken place.
Musk’s controversial moves at Twitter, along with the possibility he will need to sell more Tesla shares to keep the social media platform afloat, has taken shine off of the electric car company and its stock, according to Wedbush analyst Dan Ives.
‘The Musk vs Apple new battle is not what investors want to see,’ Ives said in a tweet.
‘(Wall) Street wants less drama, not more as this Twitter situation remains the gift that keeps on giving for the Tesla bears with every day a new chapter.’
Musk’s furious tweets at Apple
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