on the 29th of November Elon Musk posted this ominous tweet he was referring to Apple at the time and at the time he was waging an online war against them now this was not the first time Apple would go to war with other tech companies but it was definitely the first time they had to face a foe as formidable as Elon Musk the world's richest man so what exactly are we dealing with here what is this war about and is there a chance that the world's richest man will bring the world's richest company to its
knees before Elon Musk Twitter came for Apple there was epic games and before epic games there was Facebook understanding to Feud these other two companies had and still currently have with apple will help us understand how Apple got into a jewel with Elon Musk and while elon's tweet about the fruit company's predatory 30 tax sets the pace for everything wrong with the latter's relationship with other tech companies it barely scratches the surface this Feud runs deeper than you think and as you might have guessed already it has everything to do with troll Facebook's issue with
apple began with privacy while both companies are tech companies on paper their business model and revenue stream are decidedly different Apple practically draws in all of its revenue from the hardware itself with the iPhone serving the largest slice meanwhile Facebook relies predominantly on targeted advertising and this is where the problem between Zuckerberg and Tim Cook began apple is extremely strict with the privacy of their software and its users it's one of the reasons why they run a closed ecosystem and why they haven't had as many security issues as Google's Android this policy had always been
inconvenient for Facebook who in the past teamed up with HTC to build a Facebook phone the device died a miserable death the real trouble began in 2018 in the wake of the Cambridge analytica Scandal which exposed the widespread collection and misuse of personal data by third-party app developers on Facebook Tim Cook requested Facebook to delete whatever data they had collected from consumers but Zuckerberg declined so in the years they followed Apple implemented a series of changes to its operating system and in its App Store that eventually made it exponentially harder for app developers to access
users personal data without their explicit consent Facebook interpreted this as a direct attack on their business for obvious reasons and Mark Zuckerberg even issued a statement publicly criticizing Apple's changes arguing that they would hurt small businesses and consequently stifle innovation did Facebook's business really suffer the answer is yes recent years have seen them move from their original business model towards the metaverse they even went as far as rebranding from Facebook to meta and they've invested billions in Virtual and augmented reality hardware for what they anticipate to be a new frontier of the internet if they
control the hardware in this new frontier then they do not have to bother about Apple and its restrictive policies now in the background of this Feud Apple was fighting another bitter war with a completely different tech company enter epic games this video made by epic games was the ultimate in insult a revision of Apple's 1984 ad that reframed apple as the Big Brother villain which had previously been IBM funnily enough things weren't always this way because unlike Facebook epic games had a healthy relationship with apple in the beginning in fact they worked together and there's
a new game that's going to be coming out later this year that we saw that's really remarkable from epic games and it's it's my great pleasure to invite on stage Mike Capps the president of epic games to show us this amazing new game using Game Center from then on until the dissolution of their relationship in 2017 epic was featured at several other Apple product launches and was often highlighted on the App Store Apple even says they spent one million dollars marketing games for epic so you can imagine how shocked they were when epic game CEO
and co-founder Tim Sweeney began publicly criticizing Apple's payment system claiming that 30 tax on sales was unfair but epic games had accepted this policy for almost a decade so what changed it's unclear but what is clear is that by 2020 after years of Apple resisting their demand epic introduced a direct payment system in its fortnite app that allowed players to make in-game purchases without going through Apple's App Store and apple responded by removing the fortnite app from its app store which in turn prompted epic games to file a lawsuit against Apple alleging that its practices
were anti-competitive violated Federal Anti-Trust laws and ultimately hurt small businesses small businesses Apple defended Itself by arguing that its payment system was necessary to maintain a safe and secure app ecosystem at the end of it all Epic Games lost the case which wasn't shocking however the damage was done the validity of a 30 tax now had a question mark in the court of public opinion now every developer aside from Google began to question why they had to pay Apple that much and it is at this point that Elon Musk enters the conversation Elon has never
really been the biggest fan of post Steve Jobs Apple he's been vocal and highly critical of the company's Direction often citing a lack of innovation in their devices and his primary platform for expressing his discontent has been Twitter despite all of this Elon has never really confronted apple or to be more precise he has never really had a reason to until he acquired Twitter in one of the messiest and highly publicized corporate deals of the decade Aid what started off as a joke became almost a year-long back and forth litigation riddled tug of war between
musk and the bird company that ultimately led to his acquisition of the latter for a ridiculous 44 billion dollars everyone agreed that the company was overpriced Elon himself even admitted it in this tweet from May where he essentially claimed that the company was riddled with Bots and not as profitable as it said it was and even though Elon has been quoted saying that he doesn't care for the economics of Twitter he has since realized that for Twitter to work the way he wants it to the company first has to be profitable unfortunately Twitter wasn't and
still isn't in a state where it can recoup elon's multi-billion investment well I want you to take a look at this chart that shows different social media market share do you see elon's Twitter now compare that with say Instagram or even LinkedIn now take into consideration that we are in a recession and the advertising industry has been taking hit after hit but wait it gets worse in an attempt to monetize Twitter and rid the platform of bots Elon Musk introduce some changes that didn't go down well with many users and businesses on the platform like
the short-lived Eight dollar blue check Fiasco that led to a spike in impersonations and false tweets being attributed to real companies which allegedly led to a drop in many of these companies stock prices and around this time Elon Musk publish this tweet on the 28th of November 2022 Elon Musk publicly called out Apple for stopping its advertising on the social media platform implying that Apple hated Free Speech some hours later he published another tweet that implied that apple had threatened to withhold Twitter from its app stores but wouldn't tell him why but Apple was not
the only one turning the heat on elon's Twitter according to user at unusual dogs Elon lost 50 of Twitter's leading 100 top advertisers the advertisers in question have reportedly accounted for over 2 billion US dollars in spending on the platform since 2020 and over 750 million US dollars in advertising in 2022 alone but advertising wasn't the only focus of elon's online battle with apple in this tweet clearly directed at the smartphone giant Elon uses a meme to make his point about the Apple tax on third-party apps in their ecosystem in a different tweet just below
he even asked his audience did you know Apple puts a secret 30 tax on everything you buy through their App Store according to musk this is 10 times higher than it normally should be he even called out Tim Cook tagging him in this tweet apple is also threatening to withhold Twitter from its App Store but won't tell us why what's going on here at Tim Cook fortnite was removed from the App Store was the same thing going to happen to Twitter this was the question everyone was asking soon there were talks about a Tesla phone
through all of this apple didn't react or respond but that didn't stop Musk from rallying the supporters of users who chip their two cents into the feud when one user asked is Apple threatening Twitter's presence in the app store or otherwise making moderation demands elon's answer was yes then Elon began asking everyone who else has Apple censored this was a direct accusation that cast CEO Tim Cook patrons of censorship in America while positioning himself as the leader of the Revolution against the Tech Giant now it's easy to forget that Twitter was not the only Elon
Ned company caught in the middle of this mostly one-sided War Tesla users were concerned and many even begged him to take a step back from public matters for their sake but when one Tesla user asked is this really a fight we want to pick an awful lot of your Tesla customers use iOS to access their cars if that app gets pulled it'll significantly impact your ability to sell to Apple customers cards are way less convenient than BT entry elon's response was sarcastic at best on the 1st of December Elon posted this video with the caption
thanks at Tim Cook for taking me around Apple's beautiful headquarters apparently Tim Cook had made peace with Elon by inviting him to Cupertino for a tour under the same tweet Elon published another one where he clarified some issues Apple had with Twitter good conversation among other things we resolve the misunderstanding about Twitter potentially being removed from the App Store Tim was clear that apple never considered doing so but there is still one issue that hasn't been settled the 30 cut obviously Apple hasn't Exempted Twitter from the tax and it's unlikely that they will do so
anytime soon especially since epic games has appealed the same case they lost so is this a false Piece Will Elon Musk in all his eccentricity step back from his war of tweets against apple or is this the beginning of a cordial relationship between the blue bird and the Apple company for now only time will tell and in the world of the world's richest and most powerful there's more than enough of that to go around
