Tesla CEO and all-around real-life Iron Man Elon Musk has been on quite the roll, making various verbal swipes at Apple as of late — and a new interview he gave to GQ doesn’t break the mold.
Describing Steve Jobs as “kind of a jerk,” and saying, “It’s not that I care about currying favor with Apple” before backing off his answers, the parts of Musk’s interview concerning Cupertino read like a textbook case in passive-aggressive behavior.
Whatever happened to the guy who thought an Apple Car was a “great idea?”
“[T]he one time I met Steve Jobs, he was kind of a jerk,” Musk tells GQ, when asked about the oft-made comparison between himself and Apple’s late CEO. “And everyone I know who met him…”
According to Musk, his introduction to Jobs took place at a party, and Jobs was unaware of who Musk was.
In the GQ interview, Musk then stopped talking about Apple and said he wanted to withdraw his answer, saying, “The last thing I need is to generate animosity, you know. It just is not helpful.”
That doesn’t stop the subject of Apple coming up again, though, with Musk clarifying his previous comments that, “We always jokingly call Apple the ‘Tesla Graveyard.’ If you don’t make it at Tesla, you go work at Apple. I’m not kidding.”
Musk says, “You know, it’s better if I don’t say anything on [the Apple] front. My point is, there’s no upside in generating animosity. It’s not that I care about currying favor with Apple or anything like that, but I don’t care to generate animosity.”
You mean, like putting out an April Fools’ Day joke about Tesla getting into the smartwatch game?
Despite this, if you’re a fan of Tesla and Musk (and, with the exception of his slightly baffling comments about Apple, I certainly am), the whole article is well worth a read — which you can do right here.
