Elon Musk doesn’t hold back when it comes to Apple. From calling the company the “Tesla Graveyard” to criticizing its AI plans and reflecting on his unpleasant encounter with Steve Jobs, Musk’s comments make clear that the rivalry between these tech giants is personal, professional and competitive.
In 2015, during an interview with the German newspaper Handelsblatt, Musk mocked Apple’s hiring practices. Referring to the hiring of former Tesla employees, he said:
“They’ve hired people we’ve fired. We always jokingly call Apple the ‘Tesla Graveyard’. If you don’t make it at Tesla, you work at Apple, I’m not kidding.”
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This arose from reports that Apple was working on its electric vehicle project, “Titan.” Musk didn’t just hire people; He also questioned Apple’s ability to disrupt the automotive industry, saying: “Have you ever taken a look at the Apple Watch? No, it’s good that Apple is moving forward and investing in this direction. But cars are very complex compared to phones or smart watches. “You can’t just go to a supplier like Foxconn and say: build me a car.”
At the time, Apple declined to comment.
Musk’s criticism has not only been directed at Apple’s business strategies. In an interview with GQ that same year, he recalled meeting Steve Jobs at a party before his death in 2011. The meeting was not what Musk expected. “[The] “Once I met Steve Jobs, he was kind of an idiot,” Musk said.
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He later attempted to soften his comment, explaining that his observation was based on “personal experience.” He added that Larry Page, co-founder of Google, had introduced him to Jobs several years earlier and it is possible that Jobs did not even know who he was then.
Fast forward to today, and Musk’s criticism of Apple has carried over to its push toward artificial intelligence. After Apple announced updates to Siri that included integration with OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Musk expressed concerns about user privacy and security. Writing on his platform, X, called the collaboration “an unacceptable security breach” and accused Apple of “having no idea what’s really going on.”