Musk avoids “war” with Apple after “constructive talks” with Cook

Twitter CEO Elon Musk said today, Thursday, that he went to Apple’s headquarters to meet with his counterpart Tim Cook, where the two sides reached an understanding after what seemed to be a new battle looming on the horizon between the world’s richest people and the most valuable companies.

The meeting between Musk and Cook comes days after the escalation that was noted in several tweets that Musk posted on his official Twitter account, accusing the iPhone manufacturer of threatening him to delete the Twitter application from the App Store.

Musk then posted a photo confirming that he would choose to “go to war” rather than pay the 30 percent that Apple takes from all payments made through the App Store. But Musk later deleted the photo.

Today, Musk, who completed his acquisition of Twitter on October 28 for $44 billion, posted a video of a swimming pool located at Apple’s headquarters in Cupertino, California, USA.

Musk attached the video to a tweet in which he thanked Cook for the tour of “the beautiful Apple headquarters,” and then followed it up with another tweet in which he said: “It was a constructive conversation. Among other things, we resolved misunderstandings about the possibility that Twitter might be removed from the App Store. Then, he said, “Tim was clear that Apple wouldn’t have done that.”

On Monday, Musk came out to announce that Apple threatened to block Twitter from the App Store, after a previous tweet in which he revealed that the company had largely stopped advertising on the platform, indirectly accusing it of only doing so because it hates freedom of expression in America.

After publishing a poll asking whether Apple should make public all the censorship measures it has taken that affect its customers, he said in another tweet: “Apple also threatened to block Twitter from its App Store, but did not tell us why.”

In Musk’s effort to increase Twitter’s revenues by launching a monthly subscription service, Twitter Blue, for $ 8, he knew that Apple would share the profits with him by deducting a percentage ranging from 15 percent to 30 percent, which he would not have accepted. With it, he criticized the fees, describing them as a “frightening tax.”