Elon Musk meets with Apple’s Tim Cook, says misunderstanding is 'resolved'

Yahoo Finance's Dan Howley recaps Elon Musk's meeting with Apple CEO Tim Cook to resolve a dispute over Twitter and the App Store.

Video Transcript

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JULIE HYMAN: Elon Musk went to Apple's headquarters and met with Tim Cook yesterday. He said the two had a good conversation and resolved their misunderstanding around the App Store. Of course, he said that in a tweet.

Yahoo Finance's Dan Howley's here, joins us with the details on this. And initially, he just tweeted a video with shadows. And we weren't sure if that was actually, you know, it was a Musk prank of which-- for which he is known.

DAN HOWLEY: He's known.

JULIE HYMAN: But it seems like he did indeed meet with him and the two hashed it out.

DAN HOWLEY: Yeah, it was weird because, you know, as you said, it was a shadow. And then we were trying to figure out, is that Tim Cook's, you know, shadow? Is that Elon Musk's shadow?

JULIE HYMAN: Right. Right.

DAN HOWLEY: But, you know, this comes as Elon's had this-- he went on this, I guess, tweet rampage, you can call it, on Monday where he basically called out Apple, said that they're trying to take down Twitter because they don't, you know, agree with the moderation practices there. He went in on the 30% App Store fee, said that they were secretly censoring content that they-- questioning whether or not they hated free speech in America.

Just like everything he could think of that would get people to pile on to Apple. At least Elon Musk's, you know, followers would use to get on Apple. And then he has this meeting with Tim Cook. And you know, now everything's all hunky dory. And it's like, well, OK, you know, just maybe just chill out for one sec before you start firing off tweets, man.

Like you know, yes, Apple has absolutely been criticized in the past for the way the App Store works, for being-- according to some app developers-- arbitrary with their App Store, you know, process. For the fees that they have. They've been criticized from everybody from Spotify, to Netflix, to Microsoft, to Facebook.

So it's not as though Apple is above reproach or anything here. But Musk was kind of like lobbing these hand grenades without seemingly knowing what the outcome would be or if any of this was actually happening. So, you know, now he has to kind walk it back and say, you know, great conversation. We're best friends now. We're gonna go get a latte tomorrow or something.

But, you know, it just seems weird that this is the guy running this social media company where, you know, it's not like Tesla, it's not like SpaceX. Every day something changes. Every minute something changes. So you can't just, you know, go by the seat of your pants at a company like this, right? And that seems to be what he's doing.

BRAD SMITH: Well, Zuckerberg also going at Apple recently, too--

JULIE HYMAN: Yeah.

BRAD SMITH: --saying just that the App Store model is not sustainable. I mean, it's worked for Apple to this point. But--

DAN HOWLEY: Yeah, it seems to be working pretty, pretty damn good for them, I'd say. Yeah. I mean, look, this is Mark Zuckerberg basically criticizing them because of how much Apple has hurt them with their app tracking transparency software. This is obviously at "The New York Times" DealBook conference.

And you know, he's brought these gripes up before, you know, prior to app tracking transparency. He had taken out full page ads in the "Times," "Wall Street Journal," and "The Washington Post." You know, they're getting slammed, right? There's no-- you know, no buts about it. They're getting slammed by app tracking transparency, as well as the general slowdown in the digital ad sales market. But mostly, you've got to think that app tracking transparency is crushing them.

He also, you know, rightfully so, has issues with the way Apple deals with games, right? Like you can't put a whole service on that'll have games. Apple wants you to review every game, right? And have it go through the same rigmarole that every app does. So you know, he's criticized him for that. Microsoft's criticised him for that. So he's not the only one out there. But Elon, [WHISTLING] I mean--

JULIE HYMAN: Yeah.

DAN HOWLEY: --goodness.

BRAD SMITH: Yeah. My Slack Elon-bot has been going crazy this past couple of weeks.

DAN HOWLEY: [LAUGHS]

BRAD SMITH: Yahoo Finance's Dan Howley joining us to break down all things Elon, Zuckerberg, Cook, of course, some of the titans of tech here. Thanks so much, Dan.