Chance Miller:
Alan Dye, Apple’s vice president of Human Interface Design since 2015, is departing the company. Bloomberg reports that Meta has poached Dye as part of its push “into AI-equipped consumer devices.”
Stephen Lemay, a 26-year Apple design veteran, will take over the role from Dye, who officially joins Meta [to become Chief Design Officer] on December 31.
Can he take Liquid Glass with him?
Juli Clover:
Dye has been at Apple since 2006, joining the marketing and communication team as a creative director. He transitioned to Jony Ive’s user interface team in 2012 to work on iOS 7, and he worked on subsequent iOS, iPadOS, macOS, watchOS, and visionOS design updates.
John Gruber:
I think this is the best personnel news at Apple in decades. Dye’s decade-long stint running Apple’s software design team has been, on the whole, terrible — and rather than getting better, the problems have been getting worse.
Chris Silverman:
I think the fact that Dye considered Meta a good fit gives some insight into why everything he’s influenced at Apple feels so profoundly un-Apple-like.
Warner Crocker:
Frankly, I think we’re all looking forward to some change ahead.
Nick Heer:
I am sure more will trickle out about this, but one thing notable to me is that Lemay has been a software designer for over 25 years at Apple. Dye, on the other hand, came from marketing and print design. I do not want to put too much weight on that — someone can be a sufficiently talented multidisciplinary designer — but I am curious to see what Lemay might do in a more senior role.
Louie Mantia:
I like [Lemay]! I have a lot of respect for him.
Mario Guzmán:
Can we please get designers that remember that computers are bicycles for the mind and not just something to sit there and look pretty?
Previously:
Alan Dye Apple Business Design iOS Liquid Glass Mac Meta
Tyler Hall:
Maybe it’s because my eyes are getting old or maybe it’s because the contrast between windows on macOS keeps getting worse. Either way, I built a tiny Mac app last night that draws a border around the active window. I named it “Alan”.
Nick Heer:
I wish it did not feel understandable for there to be an app that draws a big border around the currently active window. That should be something made sufficiently obvious by the system.
Back in the System 7 days, Apple itself was working on a new design featuring thicker window borders. Users liked the forthcoming design so much that they installed the Aaron system extension to get it early. System 8 was codenamed Copland, after composer Aaron Copland. “Alan” is presumably a reference to departing Apple design VP Alan Dye.
Previously:
Alan Dye Design Liquid Glass Mac Mac App macOS Tahoe 26
Aditya Kalra and Munsif Vengattil (MacRumors):
India’s telecoms ministry has privately asked smartphone makers to preload all new devices with a state-owned cyber security app that cannot be deleted, a government order showed, a move likely to antagonise Apple and privacy advocates.
In tackling a recent surge of cyber crime and hacking, India is joining authorities worldwide, most recently in Russia, to frame rules blocking the use of stolen phones for fraud or promoting state-backed government service apps.
Ravie Lakshmanan:
Sanchar Saathi, available on the web and via mobile apps for Android and iOS, allows users to report suspected fraud, spam, and malicious web links through call, SMS, or WhatsApp; block stolen handsets; and allow a mobile subscriber to check the number of mobile connections taken in their name.
One of its important features is the ability to report incoming international calls that start with the country code for India (i.e., +91) to facilitate fraud.
“Such international calls are received by illegal telecom setups over the internet from foreign countries and sent to Indian citizens disguised as domestic calls,” the government notes on the website. “Reporting about such calls helps the Government to act against illegal telecom exchanges which are causing financial loss to the Government’s exchequer and posing a threat to national security.”
[…]
In a statement shared on X on December 2, 2025, India’s telecom minister Jyotiraditya M. Scindia said “this is a completely voluntary and democratic system” and that “users may choose to activate the app and avail its benefits, or if they do not wish to, they can easily delete it from their phone at any time.”
Aditya Kalra and Munsif Vengattil (MacRumors):
Apple does not plan to comply with a mandate to preload its smartphones with a state-owned cyber safety app and will convey its concerns to New Delhi, three sources said, after the government’s move sparked surveillance concerns and a political uproar.
[…]
At present, the app can be deleted by users. Scindia did not comment on or clarify the November 28 confidential directive that ordered smartphone makers to start preloading it and ensure “its functionalities are not disabled or restricted.”
Apple however does not plan to comply with the directive and will tell the government it does not follow such mandates anywhere in the world as they raise a host of privacy and security issues for the company’s iOS ecosystem, said two of the industry sources who are familiar with Apple’s concerns.
In 2021, Apple complied with a Russian law to offer government-approved apps for installation. Apple no longer directly sells iPhones in Russia, but it seems that resellers have to follow the new law that mandates pre-installing the MAX and RuStore apps.
Jon Brodkin:
The India directive isn’t just a request. The DoT said it ordered companies to comply within 90 days and submit a compliance report in 120 days, and that phone makers must “ensure that the pre-installed Sanchar Saathi application is readily visible and accessible to the end users at the time of first use or device setup and that its functionalities are not disabled or restricted.”
For devices that are already manufactured or ready to be sold to consumers, manufacturers and importers “shall make an endeavour to push the App through software updates,” the DoT said.
[…]
The Internet Freedom Foundation, an Indian digital rights advocacy group, said the government directive “converts every smartphone sold in India into a vessel for state mandated software that the user cannot meaningfully refuse, control, or remove. For this to work in practice, the app will almost certainly need system level or root level access, similar to carrier or OEM system apps, so that it cannot be disabled. That design choice erodes the protections that normally prevent one app from peering into the data of others, and turns Sanchar Saathi into a permanent, non-consensual point of access sitting inside the operating system of every Indian smartphone user.”
The group said that while the app is being “framed as a benign IMEI checker,” a server-side update could repurpose it to perform “client side scanning for ‘banned’ applications, flag VPN usage, correlate SIM activity, or trawl SMS logs in the name of fraud detection. Nothing in the order constrains these possibilities.”
Ravie Lakshmanan:
Following backlash and concerns that the security app would broadenthe government’s access to users’ devices and erode privacy, the Indian government has backed away from its plans to force smartphone makers to preload the Sanchar Saathi app on all devices sold in the country.
“Given Sanchar Saathi’s increasing acceptance, the government has decided not to make the pre-installation mandatory for mobile manufacturers,” it said in a statement released December 3, 2025.
Previously:
India iOS iOS 26 Legal Privacy Russia
Howard Oakley (Hacker News):
Over the last few weeks I’ve been discovering problems that have been eroding confidence in macOS. From text files that simply won’t show up in Spotlight search, to Clock timers that are blank and don’t function, there’s one common feature: macOS encounters an error or fault, but doesn’t report that to the user, instead just burying it deep in the log.
When you can spare the time, the next step is to contact Apple Support, who seem equally puzzled. You’re eventually advised to reinstall macOS or, in the worst case, to wipe a fairly new Apple silicon Mac and restore it in DFU mode, but have no reason to believe that will stop the problem from recurring. You know that Apple Support doesn’t understand what’s going wrong, and despite the involvement of support engineers, they seem as perplexed as you.
One reason for this is that macOS so seldom reports errors, and when it does, it’s uninformative if not downright misleading. Here’s a small gallery of examples I’ve encountered over the last few years, to bring back unhappy memories.
Previously:
Apple Software Quality Bug Mac macOS Tahoe 26 os_log
