Elon Musk responds as Justin Bieber threatens Apple with 'rear naked choke hold' over iPhone feature

Elon Musk responds as Justin Bieber threatens Apple with a 'rear naked choke hold' over a frustrating iPhone feature.

Sometimes it takes a celebrity complaint to shine a spotlight on design flaws that ordinary customers have been quietly tolerating for years.

Over the weekend, pop star Justin Bieber called out Apple over an iPhone feature that keeps ruining his listening experience. The tech giant's dictation button is a text-to-speech feature that users tend to activate by mistake.

According to Apple: "With Dictation on iPhone, you can dictate text anywhere you can type it.

"You can also use typing and Dictation together—the keyboard stays open during Dictation so you can easily switch between voice and touch to enter text."

Sounds useful in theory. But for Bieber, it's become a constant source of irritation.

"If I hit this dictation button after sending a text and it beeps and stops my music one more time," the singer posted on X. "I’m gonna find everyone at apple and put them in a rear naked choke hold. Even if I turn off dictation I somehow hit the voice note thing."

He added that the 'send button should not have multiple functions in the same spot.'

In his post from Friday (5 December), Bieber included a screenshot of his iMessage screen, pointing out the dictation feature. His complaint struck a chord with thousands of people who agreed, including Tesla billionaire Elon Musk, who replied with fire emojis.

The post also caught the eye of Ian Silber, head of product design at OpenAI, who jokingly wrote: "you're officially invited to our weekly design crits."

Meanwhile, fans are also ecstatic that Bieber is on a tech trend and can't wait to see more.

"Bieber has entered his product management era," one follower replied. "Next, tell them it shouldn’t take multiple taps to switch tabs in Safari."

Another fan suggested: "I found an amazing solution. Switch to Android."

Someone else added: "You've earned my respect."

The timing of Bieber's complaint couldn't be worse for Apple, which is already dealing with a turbulent week of high-level executive exits.

Earlier this week, the company revealed that John Giannandrea, senior vice president for machine learning and AI strategy, is stepping down from his role. He will serve as an advisor until his retirement in 2026.

Then, on Wednesday, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced that Alan Dye will run the company's new creative studio in Reality Labs.

Dye has spent nearly two decades at Apple as vice president of human interface design, so this move could see a shake-up in Apple's leadership.