Canada’s pop icon Justin Bieber took aim at Apple on Friday night, going off with his frustration regarding iMessage and the user interface of its voice controls, taking “Beliebers” by surprise with his uncanny UI criticism.
In a post on X, he said the dictation and voice note controls keep interrupting his music when he tries to send messages.
Bieber wrote, “If I hit this dictation button after sending a text and it beeps and stops my music one more time, I’m gonna find everyone at [Apple] and put them in a rear naked choke hold.” A rear naked choke is a Brazilian jiu-jitsu grappling move where someone applies pressure around the sides of the neck from behind, cutting off blood flow and causing a quick tap out, which you see in mixed martial arts, such as in the UFC.
“Even if I turn off dictation I somehow hit the voice note thing. The send button should not have multiple functions in the same spot,” said Bieber. Seeing Bieber critique Apple’s UI design flaws were not on our 2025 bingo card.
The replies to Bieber were even better. “Don’t worry, Alan Dye left for Meta the other day. It’ll get fixed soon,” said YouTuber Quinn Nelson.
Storm replied, “Bieber has entered his product management era. Next, tell them it shouldn’t take multiple taps to switch tabs in Safari.” Amen.
“APPLE WHY IS JUSTIN BIEBER GIVING YOU UI FEEDBACK STEVE JOBS WOULD BE SO PISSED RN,” said user Empress Trash. “Bro has better UX sense than half the people here,” said another reply, from Joyce.
Co-founder of Airbnb, Joe Gebbia, also chimed in. “That special moment when pop-star X and design X overlap.” Elon Musk also shared Bieber’s post with two fire emojis.
Bieber’s unofficial declaration of war on Apple comes after a bad week for the company, with a flurry of executive departures, ranging from its head UI designer and more.
Dictation on the iPhone remains terrible, as Siri never really understands what you are saying. The revised AI-powered Siri coming next Spring can’t come soon enough. One day, Apple will make Siri great again. One day.
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Why the AI slop picture? 🥀
Sounds like a skill issue. I never hit that button once.
I’ve never hit that button too?! Rich cry baby. lol