Hey everybody. Welcome back to the Elon Musk
Podcast. This is a show where we discuss
the critical crossroads that shape SpaceX, Tesla X, The
Boring Company, and Neurolink. I'm your host, Will Walden.
Elon Musk says that Apple is suppressing his new AI app and
he plans to sue them for it. Elon is suing Apple.
He's CEO of XAI, and he claims that Apple is manipulating App
Store rankings to demote his company's chatbot Crock XAI,
even as user downloads and engagement climbs, according to
his statistics. Now this accusation has
escalated into a public legal threat by Musk.
He warned them the formal action could come within days.
Now Musk made that announcement on X, claiming that Apple
artificially dropped Croc's ranking despite what he called a
massive surge in downloads. He insisted that Croc briefly
became the number one app in the US App Store this week, but that
Apple manually moved it down, favoring its own or rival apps.
He described this as blatant antitrust violation and said
legal filings are imminent unless Apple reverses the
ranking adjustment. Another claim follows the August
10th launch of Grok as a stand alone iOS app, and until now
Grok had been integrated directly into X for Premium Plus
subscribers, and the new app places XAI in direct competition
with other AI chat box like Open AI's ChatGPT and Google's
Gemini. With hours of release, Grok rose
in the App Store's charts and Musk's team expected it to hold
his position. But it didn't happen.
Musk said that Apple's team manually adjusted the App Store
rankings shortly after Grok hit the top spot.
He provided absolutely no technical data, but he cited
internal XAI download analytics, showing a sharp upward trend
that he said did not match the apps sudden ranking drop.
He did not specify which Apple apps or partners allegedly
benefited from this adjustment. Now, let's play devil's advocate
here. Elon's app rose dramatically for
a short amount of time. And during this short amount of
time, could there have been another app in the App Store
adjacent Elon's app? You know, ChatGPT just released
a new GPT 5. So could there have been a spike
in ChatGPT downloads at the same time and ChatGPT just overtook
Grok? Because it has, you know, it has
more media behind it. It has more staying power.
People know more about chatty BT than they do Grok.
It's just a fact. It's all over the place.
But could that have been the case?
And could it not have been artificial?
Could Apple not have pushed Grok down and Elon just got beat in
the rankings? I'm just playing devil's
advocate. Just putting something out there
so you can think about it. So there's been sources that are
close to XAI. They said they're already the
legal team is already preparing A complaint focused on US
antitrust law, particularly around self preferencing
behavior in Apple's App Store. They're also examining Apple's
app ranking algorithms to build a case that Apple exerts undue
influence over visibility for competitive products.
The potential lawsuit could cite historical regulatory scrutiny
into Apple's handling of App Store search and discovery
systems, which have been criticized in past
investigations. Now, Musk's statement added
pressure by claiming the issue could soon involve international
regulators. He framed the incident as more
than just a private dispute and urged global authorities to
investigate how Apple curates App Store rankings for AI apps
now. That framing aligns with earlier
claims he made about Apple's partnership with Open AI, which
he has repeatedly described as dangerous and mana ballistic.
So the acquisition also come in the middle of Musk's larger
public feud with Apple and Open AI.
Of course, he hates the owner or the CEO of ChatGPT.
Apple announced it would embed ChatGPT into Siri and other iOS
features, triggering backlash from Elon Musk, who pledged to
ban Apple devices from his. Companies claim the integration
would compromise user security and warn employees at Tesla,
SpaceX and X that they would need to surrender Apple products
at the door if the deal went through.
Now the rival. A rivalry has put Apple and XAI
on a collision course, especially as AI assistants
become core to smartphone operating systems and XAI
executives believe that Apple's control of the App Store allows
allows it to distort market competition at a curriculum
moment when consumers are just beginning to explore third party
AI tools. The lawsuit, that's if they
actually file it, would have legal weight complaints many
smaller developers have raised for years.
In the discovery phase, Apple would have to release all of
their analytics for AI apps. They'd have to release
everything from the inception of the app getting accepted into
the Apple Store. I've had numerous apps be
accepted into the Apple Store. And when you do that, your, your
app is checked out by people, They make sure it's fine, make
sure everything works well. And then they add it to the
Apple store. And pretty quickly after that,
you can see your, your analytics start to rise.
I've had a few apps that are, that were trending in the
entertainment sector. I also had them on the Android
store back in the day. I had, OK, so this is a funny
one. I had an app called the Justin
Bieber Farter app. OK, this is just me being like,
I just goofed around one night and I developed this.
I thought it was funny. You pushed on Justin Bieber a
picture of Justin Bieber's belly or Justin Bieber, you pressed on
his belly and he would make a fart noise.
And it was just a random Farter noise, right?
And at one point it was, you know, I was making a good side
hustle from the money that I was making for this Farter app.
I think it was $0.99 to download.
And people loved it. So I made a few others and they
tanked. But the Justin Bieber 1 was
pretty popular. So let's make a little side
hustle. I think I, I think I made a
little side hustle from it. I'm not sure if that's true.
So OK, so just you know, I'm sure I can look up the stats and
find out, but I made a little bit of money from it.
I don't know if that was the one that was my side hustle, that it
was a long time ago, like 15 years ago or something.
So that was a long, long time ago.
But even back then, you could literally see your analytics
within minutes of like sending your app up to the App Store.
And I'm sure Elon Musk has seen the same thing.
He saw his apps. Of course mine was not on the
scale of Elon. Of course.
I mean the Justin Bieber Farter app wouldn't be on the same
scale as something from Elon and XAI and Grok and X.
Nothing like that or or chat TPT.
But he could see his stats improve over time.
Shoot straight up because one, he has multiple millions of
people following on X who he can blast something out to and like
tell them that the the app is live, go download it and he has
so many fans that of course they're going to go download it.
You know, millions of people probably downloaded the app
immediately, hundreds of thousands immediately.
And of course, Elon takes that as you know, he has the top
spot, which of course he probably did.
He probably did have the top spot for a little bit.
And you know, like I was saying, does it coincide with the Chat
GPTG PT-5 release? And does it coincide with other
chat bots releases or something like, you know, Claude or
something? Maybe there was a, a release of
something else at that point. So we're not 100% sure.
I don't know the statistics of when he released the app and
what timing it was or what other apps were released at the time
or anything like that. So we're going to take it with a
grain of salt what he's saying. And also, Apple has not
responded to Elon Musk's threats.
Of course they didn't because they're a giant company.
They have to get their lawyers involved.
They're not going to directly engage Elon Musk at this point.
Elon Musk has a way of saying things that is very harsh and
very straightforward and straight to the point.
Apple has a more subdued take on things.
They're pointing to developer guides and ranking policies that
rely on user behavior, download velocity, and also retention.
Those are the three things that Apple says are important to
climb the charts. They basically have an
algorithm. The algo tells you what about
the user behavior? Are they downloading things?
How fast are they downloading? You know, do you have 10
downloads per second or do you have 100 downloads per second?
Does that waiver, you know, do you have, you know, how many,
how many downloads do you have in the first hour?
And if that spikes, that's great.
But if it tips in the second hour, the algorithm goes maybe
people don't like it as much. So, you know, there's download
philosophy, behavior and retention.
Also like how many people actually open the app?
If they download it, what do they do with it?
You know, Apple has also defended its right to curate
Apple Store content based on internal ranking algorithms and
performance thresholds. So with the Apple user
agreement, I've seen this numerous times because I've had
to read these things and because I've developed apps.
They do say this. They're they do have internal
rankings, they have performance thresholds.
And even with podcasts, they do the same thing.
So if you are a popular podcast and this podcast has been in the
top 20 in the top 15 of technology podcasts before and
it's usually in the top 50, the rankings.
It's it is velocity. It is like if you get a killer,
one killer episode, it has a Halo effect on all your other
episodes. People might subscribe to your
show and that boosts you up a little bit.
People think, you know, Apple podcast doesn't have an
algorithm, but they definitely do and it's in their terms of
service. So there's a, you know, the
public nature of Musk accusation has triggered speculation
throughout the Internet. You know, they need to prove
deliberate manipulation from Apple.
They need to, of course, in the discovery phase, if they do
bring this to court, if Apple doesn't just settle with Elon,
which they probably won't, they have a, you know, they have all
the money in the world, so they won't side with Elon and they're
not going to, you know, they're not going to probably settle
with him. But also if they go to
discovery, Elon's lawyers may make them distribute their
algorithm to the outside world, which is not good.
So if other people find out how the algorithm works, they can
manipulate it. And that's not what Apple wants.
So we're going to see how this works out.
You know, there's the App Store rankings are shaped by multiple
variables, download rate, session duration too, and also
user reviews. So if you had a download rate
that was super high, but your session duration was very low,
you know, the download rate would be how fast X amount of
people download the app, right? Like if you had a million people
download your app in the first day, that's great, but if only
50,000 of them opened it up or, you know, opened it up for a
long, you know, like a long amount of time, the session
duration is very low. It's called audience retention,
right? So you can see that if it was
downloaded that many times and it wasn't used, then they're not
going to keep pushing it through the algorithm because no one's
using the app actually. So why would they keep promoting
it? And also user reviews, you know,
if everybody's giving it a five star review, that's great.
But if people are saying one star review and review bombing
it as ones, of course it's going to fall off.
So unless XAI can produce internal Apple communications or
clear anomalies and ranking logic, the case is going to be
very difficult to win. And that's all going to happen
in the discovery phase. So Musk has made it clear he's
willing to take the fight public to He has all the money to do
it, too. He doesn't care.
He warned that Apple's behavior damages fair access to markets
and sends a message that competing with Apple carries
consequences. He framed the threat of legal
action as necessary to protect AI innovation from being crushed
by what he sees as dominant gatekeepers.
Now, some people think that Elon is a jealous type of person.
He's a very, let's let's just say dominant personality, and he
always wants to win. And if he doesn't win, he sues
people. If he doesn't get his way, he
sues people. He feels that a legal argument
is the best way to win. And maybe he is doing this for
the right reasons. Maybe he does have some internal
information that shows something that Apple isn't ready to show
us. Maybe he does have some some
documentation from his analytics that show that people not only
downloaded the app at a record rate, but opened it up and used
it for a long amount of time and also gave a five star ratings.
Maybe Elon has that, maybe he has that.
So I'm going to look this up live right now as we're doing
this. Let's see if if we can do this.
So this is, this is the thing that we usually don't do AI
assistant, they have 4.9 stars right now #2 in productivity.
So they're #2 they're not number one, but they're number 2IN
productivity at this point, right behind ChatGPT.
So the things that Elon was talking about, and this is for
the iPhone, for the iPad, Let's find out if he's even up there.
If if Grok is even on there, it's ChatGPT, good notes and
then top free iPad apps. The good notes, the Netflix
notability, Prime Video, those are the top apps in general for
you know, for the iPad and the top charts for free apps.
Grok is still number six. So it's chat GBTT on her dating
advice, whatever that is T dating advice, Threads parent
Square and then Grok. So and that's just the top free
app. So Grok is the top 6, which is
really great. Threads is 4, which very
surprising to me. I didn't think Threads was that
popular, but it's funny that Threads is also beating another
one of Elon's companies at this point.
So, yeah, but it's really strange.
And this is in the United States at 8:40 AM.
And then all the Google 7, you know, 10/11/12, you know, Google
Apps, Maps, Chrome, Gmail, TikTok is number 13.
Yeah. So I don't, I don't see this
chord, you know, I don't see Elon's app.
Oh, X is #38X is 38. That's wild.
And then threads is 4. That's crazy.
So threads is 4X is 38 OK that this race very weird to me
because I didn't expect threads to be that big then what?
Not cap cut, TikTok, things like that.
So Elon's in good company. He's in the top six with Crock.
We'll see how it works out for him.
Hopefully he can figure out why he's not top free app on Apple
App Store. But I mean, it's still pretty
good. Top six.
Let me know in the comments of whatever podcast app you're on
right now. Do you think it's good for Grok
to be in the top 6? I think it's great.
It's getting millions of downloads, probably 4.9 stars.
Let's read a couple of these reviews.
Let's see. Bloody amazing.
When I got the review request, I was right in the middle of doing
something in the Grok app. I asked Grap how I could import
a lot of PDF copies. Ham radio I still have from the
80s and 90s. I asked how I could create a
model that would answer questions about ham radio.
Grock not only gave me the answers of how to do it, but it
used examples within its answer that a ham radio operator might
use. Like what's the length of an
antenna for 20? OK, so 55 stars.
JWMC, man, I think, I mean, we're trying to, we're trying to
solve this, right? I see five stars across the
board. Oh, here's a three star listens
to your private conversations. Great app, except for new
microphone features. Several times over the past
several weeks, while using the app in text mode, grok suddenly,
without warning switches to microphone mode and starts
glibly commenting on private conversations it is overhearing
that I'm having with an actual human.
This most often happens when holding phone in left hand and
using a left thumb to Scroll down by swiping up.
My use of left thumb scrolling became a habit because the
horrible UI design puts a jump to bottom icon directly in path
of right thumb scrolling hitting it.
OK, I oh here we go. I discovered the cause.
Left thumb forward scrolling can apparently be seen as a left
swipe by some hidden goblin deep inside Grok.
Apparently the Grok app is treating this as a mic on
request. All other iPhone level gestures
turned off never used them for exactly this reason.
The left swiped open mic is not documented and there's no option
to disable the gesture or remove mic privileges from the app
until it's fixed. OK, so we have a few three
stars, and here's another one because the five stars are just
glowing reviews and we all know that those are going to be
great. So here's this one by recruiter
Ray. I am in a tough place trying to
figure out how to best invest my time and money.
In one sense, I'm paying the $30 monthly for ChatGPT premium
already and generally pretty happy.
With that said, I was intrigued by the performance specs of Grok
plus I like Elon Musk. I started using it, would often
compare the results from Grok 3 and ChatGPT 4.
Frankly, I sometimes get annoyed by Grok's casual slang like
responses. If I want a super casual
unprofessional response and I'll prompt for it.
But I prefer the default to be clean and crisp.
Also, I found Grok 3 to be somewhat critical, bordering
cynical of some topics. But I have priced the same with
Chacha PT on occasion as well. OK, so they're basically saying
they don't like the way that it's just chill and it talks
like, you know, one of your buddies.
It's chilling. So there's there's a couple.
So there's not that many reviews either.
So there's, OK, so people haven't written reviews,
apparently not that many, but there are five star people that
go to five stars but haven't written anything yet.
Four 488,000 rankings for that. And we're just trying to do a
little bit of sleuthing here. So Grok has a lot of ratings.
Let's go back to ChatGPT. 3.4 million ratings and Elon thinks
his chat app is more powerful. So I was like, OK, so they're
like not a lot of people did the ratings for for Croc, right?
And so 3.4 million ratings for ChatGPT, everything is four or
five stars, 4.9 out of five with four, 3.4 million ratings.
That is incredible. 3/28/2025 you know four 27531 let's see
there's 527 let's see let's do a four-star because that's one of
the ones here. I recently downloaded the app
and overall it's a great platform with excellent
potential. However, I did encounter a
couple of issues with logging in that I feel need to be
addressed. This could be approved by
streamlining the login flow. I do hope the developers take
note of the login challenges and work on improving the aspect of
the app. In conclusion, while the app has
its share of login issues, it still holds promise.
I'm optimistic that updates what happened, etcetera, etcetera.
So it seems like not only Grok doesn't have as many ratings,
488,000 ratings, so not even a million, like not even half a
million ratings compared to ChatGPT, but most of them are
like they're OK, you know, like it's 4.9% or 4.9 stars.
So they're good ratings, but not as many as ChatGPT.
So I can see where where Apple is like, look, ChatGPT is way
more how many downloads does it get per per like minute, you
know, And also the rankings are super high.
So yeah, it's it seems like one of those things that it's just
going to be left up to Elon to prove some prove his information
on this thing. Let me know what you think.
I want to know if you have comments on your podcast app.
Let me know what you think about this.
Because if Elon has a problem with it, he's going to have to
prove it in court. And if he can prove it in court,
he could steer public in regulatory oversight for app
stores even more than it already has.
So he's already reshaped policies and sectors from like
AI use in automobiles, like self driving, also direct to consumer
auto sales, things like that. Digital advertising too.
He's reshaped all of those policies just from saying this
isn't fair. I'm going to take you to court
and then the, you know, take either governments or companies
to court. And if he wins, he can reshape
these policies. Now, if he follows through with
this, it will be up to Apple to prove that they are in the right
here. It's also up to Elon to prove
that Apple is in the wrong. So we're going to see how this
plays out. This is going to be a real
really wild one. But yeah, let me know what you
think. Hey, thank you so much for
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