Alan Dye Leaving Apple for Meta
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?
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.
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.
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.
Frankly, I think we’re all looking forward to some change ahead.
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.
I like [Lemay]! I have a lot of respect for him.
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:
- John Giannandrea Leaving Apple
- Shipping Liquid Glass
- One Size Does Not Fit All
- Jeff Williams Retiring as Apple’s COO
- Assorted Notes on Liquid Glass
- Liquid Glass
- 25 Years of the Dock and Aqua
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3rd day of December and a Christmas miracle already. Praise be.
Gurman calling this a coup is correct -- it just isn't one for Meta. He's a perfect fit over there, a helping of terrible taste to go with their terrible products and ethics.
That Louie Mantia quote made me wince until I followed the link and realized he was talking about Dye’s replacement!
I know we're told not to judge books by their covers, but humans absolutely do. Because it's almost always right. I always thought Jony Ive looks like he's cosplaying a shaved testicle, and Dye a testicle with a Warby Parker subscription. But Lemay just looks like a regular human being. I find this reassuring.
> Can he take Liquid Glass with him?
And all the terrible icons he’s been responsible for even before looking glass.
Horrible "designer" responsible for the hideous Liquid Ass work will now have a chance to further uglify all the ugly Meta stuff. Good luck to all players!
I laughed at Guzman's takes, but disagree with one point: /We/ don't have to clean up anything. This is Apple's mess. Devs only need to practice better discernment, recognize when Apple is going Full Retard, and *not* follow them off a cliff. If only all things Swift got the same dev response that Liquid Ass got…
Apple has to find that Courage and admit they fucked up and revert LA. But I have low hopes because Apple didn't fire Dye, which means they still don't recognize LA is complete trash.
UI design is only half of the problem leading to the slow demise of macOS. Now I would like to see changes at software engineering. I don’t know who decided for annual releases, Swift everything and to compromise on quality to the point even general public recognises there’s a problem. But that Direct Responsible Individual should go. To Meta if possible.
Wait wait wait. So all this time Alan Dye was the marketing person who came over after Forstall was relieved of duty, and is responsible for this lost decade in interface design? He was the one responsible for that absolute abomination of the iOS 7 redesign?
Also, agreed @Hammer, Swift should have gotten far more pushback than it did, the only thing that saved it imo, was that Apple was still riding the highs of their reputation as being high quality and tastemakers, so it was harder to question/push back. It's not like Objective-C didn't need to be modernized, but it really could have just been modernized gracefully over time. They forced a hard choice on themselves that they didn't need to make, and I'm afraid far more damage was done with Swift than the Liquid Glass.
If there's anything that's going to trip Apple up, aside from being too reliant on China as a supplier, I actually fear it's going to be Swift.
