No, Justin Bieber is not going to work for Apple

Last week saw some truly bizarre "news" take over social media. Justin Bieber is to become Apple's head of UI design? Could this be true?

Well, in short, it's not, but the singer did have a point about Apple's iMessage. The rumours started when Justin posted on X, venting his frustration about the dictation button on iMessage. He threatened to "find everyone at Apple and put them in a rear naked choke hold" if he hit the dictation button after sending a text one more time. His issue being that the dictation button beeps and stops his music when pressed and is in the same spot as the 'send' button.

We bet Justin just didn't want to have his Spotify Wrapped interrupted.

There were a range of responses to Justin's outburst, some were absolutely with him on this annoying feature, others were questioning why the chokehold needed to be naked. Each to their own.

The plot then thickened as Apple released a "press release" announcing that Justin Bieber was to join Apple as the new head of UI design. It doesn't take much reading to discover that this is indeed fake.

So did anyone from Apple really care what Justin Bieber thinks of its iMessage function? Well, Ian Silber, the head of design an OpenAI, replied and said, "you're officially invited to our weekly design crits". But that's about as far as the whole thing went.

That hasn't stopped plenty of people enjoying the chat though, with one commenter saying "Justin Bieber having opinions on UI (and good ones at that) was NOT on my bingo card lol".

With some saying they agree that this feature "has been so annoying". While another commenter claims to have found the solution: "switch to Android".

Overall, I think he does have a point. Having two buttons in the same place do different things is just confusing. I'm also surprised that Justin Bieber is actually using iMessage to send text messages, which seem a little out of date to me. But if he's doing it to avoid the clutches of WhatsApp, then all power to him.

For some actual news from Apple, see our post on Oliver Jeffers' fish-mas tree, which is being projected onto Battersea Power Station from now until Christmas Eve.