For those who don't know, Microsoft once turned down the chance to buy out Apple and instead just bailed out the company for a few hundred thousand dollars. True that investment did make it a lot of dosh, but it could have saved the world by having its foot firmly on Apple's throat.
However, it seems that Tim Cook made a similar mistake if he wanted to get into the car making industry -- if you believe Elon Musk.
The Tesla CEO tweeted that he considered selling his electric car company to Apple, but Apple CEO Tim Cook was not even interested in taking a meeting.
Musk wrote that during the darkest days of the Model 3 program, I reached out to Tim Cook to discuss the possibility of Apple acquiring Tesla for 1/10 of its current value.
He refused to take the meeting. It was a rare admission from the mercurial CEO that he once considered giving up control of the company he helped build and take to a market value that's more than the top nine automakers combined.
On Tuesday, Musk also made remarks about lithium iron phosphate batteries that Apple is reportedly developing for use in vehicles, per a Reuters report on Monday. "Strange, if true", Musk wrote. "Tesla already uses iron-phosphate for medium range cars made in our Shanghai factory. A monocell is electrochemically impossible, as max voltage is ~100X too low. Maybe they meant cells bonded together, like our structural battery pack?"
Or maybe it is just hype, Elon....