You almost have to feel sorry for Alan Dye at this point. It was pretty clear he expected news of his departure from Apple to be something of a bombshell, and Meta clearly thought their acquisition of Apple’s former VP of Human Interface Design would be perceived as a coup.
Instead, the prevailing opinion among Apple commenters appears to be succinctly summarized as a collective sigh of relief …
Bye, then
Dye made a rather self-congratulatory post on Instagram in the form of what many felt to be an entirely inappropriate quote from Steve Jobs.
Halide Camera creator Sebastian de With was one of many to take issue with this.
Other commenters were quick to pick up on the lack of curly quotes, and the final period being outside of the quote instead of inside it where it belongs. While these could be perceived as petty complaints, they really don’t seem so given that one of the biggest criticisms of Dye’s work was a lack of attention to detail. (Elias Datler was the original source of the screen-grab BAG used.)
Bloomberg carried one of the very few reports to portray the news as bad news for Apple.
Meta has poached Apple’s most prominent design executive in a major coup […] The move represents a significant loss for Apple, which is already experiencing an exodus of talent from its design team, including the exit of visionary executive Jony Ive in 2019.
The rest of the internet – and reportedly the rest of Apple – not so much.
The sentiment within the ranks at Apple is that today’s news is almost too good to be true. People had given up hope that Dye would ever get squeezed out, and no one expected that he’d just up and leave on his own.
Liquid Glass wasn’t the issue per se
To be fair to Dye, I don’t think this was about Liquid Glass per se. Yes, the new UI was as controversial as iOS 7 back in the day, but that’s inevitable with any dramatic change. Yes, there were some major faux pas in the earlier versions of iOS 26, but again it’s not unusual for Apple to have to fix what you would have thought were rather glaring errors in an initial release.
I’m on record as saying that I personally think that Liquid Glass is, on balance, a welcome development. Sure, it has its glitches even now, but I do think it brings a welcome freshness to the look of Apple’s operating systems and adds visual interest.
But even if you absolutely hate everything about Liquid Glass, the responsibility for that cannot be laid at Dye’s feet: it of course had to be approved at the very highest levels within Apple, and it was very clear from the keynote that the company feels proud of it.
However, I do think it’s entirely reasonable to blame Dye not just for a lack of attention to detail, but also a fairly consistent pattern of ill-considered usability decisions. The placement of some key UI elements simply defied common sense, with many of them hidden away behind the infamous ellipsis.
It makes me optimistic for the future
Prior to his promotion, Stephen Lemay was not a very well-known name outside Apple. It’s of course no surprise that Tim Cook has good things to say about him given that the CEO likely made the decision himself.
Steve Lemay has played a key role in the design of every major Apple interface since 1999. He has always set an extraordinarily high bar for excellence and embodies Apple’s culture of collaboration and creativity.
But Gruber’s report suggests that Apple’s new design head is very well thought of throughout the ranks.
Everyone I’ve spoken to is happy — if not downright giddy — at the news that Lemay is replacing Dye […] Part of what made Stephen Lemay a popular choice within Apple’s ranks is that Lemay, by all accounts I’ve heard, isn’t a political operator and never angled for a promotion to a level of this prominence. His focus has always singularly been on the work.
This was backed by a direct quote from one of the most long-standing of Lemay’s direct reports.
Steve’s been my manager for my entire 15 year career so far at Apple and I could not be more excited for this new era.
A fresh design chief with a reputation for focusing on details, and with the seeming support of the rest of the design team, makes me feel extremely optimistic for the future. The immediate task is to sort out the more glaring issues with the recent software upgrades, but I’m also looking forward to discovering over time Lemay’s vision for the future of Apple design.
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