Dye, who spent more than 20 years at Apple, has overseen design for the Vision Pro headset, as well as the iPhone X and the Apple Watch. — Reuters
Apple’s head of user interface design, Alan Dye, is leaving the Cupertino, California-based company. While losing key executive talent is usually bad news for a company, some industry voices have welcomed the news of Dye’s departure.
“Dye’s decadelong stint running Apple’s software design team has been, on the whole, terrible – and rather than getting better, the problems have been getting worse,” wrote technology blogger John Gruber about the news. Gruber authors the Daring Fireball blog and has covered UI design and Apple since 2002.
Dye, who spent more than 20 years at Apple, has overseen design for the Vision Pro headset, as well as the iPhone X and the Apple Watch. But most recently he is known for designing Liquid Glass, which represents a user interface overhaul of iOS26 and MacOS, and which has faced criticism from both experts and users alike.
Wired’s Craig Grannell wrote in September that “[w]hile some people just hate change, Liquid Glass does invite criticism. Instead of sharpening focus, it too often muddies it due to legibility issues and distracting visual effects. On Mac, controls are overly prominent, yet on iPhone, they are relentlessly eager to disappear into a new Apple take on hamburger menus, denying users the chance to build effective muscle memory.”
Following the announcement, Apple CEO Tim Cook confirmed Dye’s successor would be decades-old Apple UI designer Stephen Lemay.
“Steve Lemay has played a key role in the design of every major Apple interface since 1999,” Cook told Bloomberg.
Inside Cupertino, there is an alleged positive response to the news, Gruber reports.
“Sources I’ve spoken to who’ve worked with Lemay at Apple speak highly of him, particularly his attention to detail and craftsmanship,” he wrote. “Those things have been sorely lacking in the Dye era.”
Every year for the past decade – with the exception of this year – Gruber has interviewed Apple executives onstage as part of the Worldwide Developers Conference. He’s known for being a critical voice, so his praise of Lemay is worth noting.
“I’ve chatted with people with criticisms of specific things Lemay has worked on or led at Apple (e.g., aspects of iPadOS multitasking that struck many of us as deliberately limiting, rather than empowering), but everyone I’ve spoken to is happy – if not downright giddy – at the news that Lemay is replacing Dye,” Gruber wrote in a follow-up post to the Dye departure.
Following the news of Dye’s departure from Apple, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced via Threads that Dye will lead a new creative studio in Reality Labs, Meta’s virtual reality and hardware division.
“We plan to elevate design within Meta, and pull together a talented group with a combination of craft, creative vision, systems thinking, and deep experience building iconic products that bridge hardware and software,” Zuckerberg wrote.
Dye will be joined by another longtime Apple designer, Billy Sorrentino, to “bring together design, fashion, and technology” as Meta tries to build on its existing hardware like VR sets and AI glasses.
The executive move is unsurprising, as Meta continues to try to poach talent across Silicon Valley. In one alleged instance, Zuckerberg hand-delivered soup in an attempt to recruit an OpenAI employee. According to Bloomberg, the new design team will report to chief technology officer Andrew Bosworth, with Dye starting his tenure as chief design officer on December 31. – Inc./Tribune News Service
