Apple responds to Elon Musk’s accusation of rigged App Store charts

Apple logo

On Monday, Elon Musk used X to express frustration that Apple rarely highlights X or Grok on the App Store, accusing the company of unfairly promoting ChatGPT. He threatened immediate legal action by xAI. Apple has since addressed Musk’s claim.

Mark Gurman via X:

Apple on @elonmusk’s claims: “The App Store is designed to be fair and free of bias. We feature thousands of apps through charts, algorithmic recommendations, and curated lists selected by experts using objective criteria.”

Company adds: “Our goal is to offer safe discovery for users and valuable opportunities for developers, collaborating with many to increase app visibility in rapidly evolving categories.”



MacDailyNews Take: Note that Apple’s statements very carefully never state that its App Store charts are based solely on the number of downloads each app receives, as most users are likely to assume.



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12 Comments

  1. If Elon says it you know its a lie. He shattered his empire and now using Trumpian non-logic that he is somehow being persecuted, while using Doge to persecute others. He is a Nazi by his own admission.

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      1. You dont need to be on the left to think he is Nazi….you just need to listen to him or watch his arm gestures. As for idiocy, watching your country plummet the International charts for human rights, freedom of expression and govt transparency, that fits the bill of idiocy.👍🏼

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    1. If Elon Musk made an ‘xOS’ and I had to choose between that and M$’$ Windoze, I’d say no to both and find a Linux distro to learn. I’d straight up learn Haiku just to redeem the BeOS system that Bill “Epstein Island VIP” Gates sabotaged with their monopolistic BS. I’m not selling my soul to Musk or any of these other tech billionaires who are using their greed to ruin the society we live in.

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    2. Anyone defending Musk or promoting Moscow Agent Governing America ..is clearly not paying attention… National Guard deployment in cities is all practice for those seeking authoritarian control ….

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      1. Democrats. First they destroy cities with soft-on-crime stupidity, flood them with illegal aliens, making them unlivable for American citizen taxpayers,.Then they whine, moan, and complain when Republicans come to clean up their disasters.

        Enjoy the 2026 midterms, Dems!

        MAGA 🇺🇸!

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  2. Yes, the same person who famously claimed—in a bout of wild optimism—that he hoped to cut “at least” $2 trillion out of the federal budget. Yet, not long after the election, Musk reduced his ambitions to $1 trillion. Throughout the first few months of Trump’s second term, DOGE claimed to be saving Americans billions, but analyses repeatedly showed the organization was wildly inflating its savings and often making rudimentary math mistakes. In May, the billionaire claimed that DOGE had saved Americans $160 billion, but admitted that his org was “not as effective” as he’d hoped. At the time, the New York Times reported that DOGE had only publicly accounted for $58 billion of the savings Musk alleged and that even those purported savings had been “significantly inflated, by including outright errors and guesses about the future.

  3. Not that I care that much about this, but when I read corporate responses I’m always left with more questions than answers because they seem to leave out important information.

    Who gathers these “charts”, who programs the “algorithmic recommendations”, who are the “experts” that curate lists, and what “objective criteria” is used to select them?

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