Every prominent executive is seemingly abandoning the Apple ship. The latest is Alan Dye, Apple’s Vice President of Human Interface Design, who you may know as the guy who introduced Liquid Glass to all of Apple’s platforms, according to Bloomberg. Dye is leaving for Meta, where he will run a “new design studio” in charge of “hardware, software and AI integration for its interfaces” and report to the company’s Chief Technology Officer, Andrew “Boz” Bosworth.
Replacing Dye will be Stephen Lemay, a designer who’s worked on Apple interfaces since 1999, according to CEO Tim Cook.
Dye’s departure is the latest in a string of high-profile exits at Apple. On Monday, Apple announced SVP for Machine Learning and AI Strategy John Giannandrea—aka the guy in charge of rebooting Siri, and failed—would be retiring in spring 2026. Recently, Apple lost its former COO Jeff Williams, who also announced his retirement. Abidur Chowdhury, an industrial designer who played a key role in developing the iPhone Air, also left Apple in recent weeks for an unnamed AI company.
Zooming out, Apple has lost quite a few members of its design team, spread across hardware and software. Former Apple Chief Design Officer Jony Ive exited in 2019 to form his own design firm, LoveFrom, which is now working on a secret AI gadget for OpenAI. Ive’s successor, Evans Hankey, also left Apple for LoveFrom in 2023. Ive and LoveFrom has been unapologetic in poaching former Apple designers and engineers to work on OpenAI’s family of AI devices.
On the one hand, hiring Dye is a major win for Meta. Mark Zuckerberg has shown he has very deep pockets and is not afraid to spend lavishly to hire talent away from its biggest competitors, including Apple, OpenAI, Microsoft, and Google. While Meta has largely focused its checkbook on snatching away AI researchers to develop “superintelligence” Zuckerberg is hellbent on becoming the winner of smart glasses and whatever AI-centric face computer or gadget that everyone is seemingly racing towards.
On the other hand, this has to suck big time for Apple, which continues to bleed top talent. Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman says this is far from the end of Apple losing people. Dye’s departure is notable because he led interface design for Apple Vision Pro’s visionOS and heralded Liquid Glass as a unifying design language for all of Apple’s platforms. Neither has been well-received. Vision Pro, no doubt due to its $3,500 price, has failed to usher in the era of “spatial computing.” Visit almost any Apple Store and you’ll find few people interested in trying out the headset; sales have reportedly been weak. Meanwhile, Liquid Glass on platforms like iOS 26 and macOS 26 has faced strong criticism from consumers and developers due to poor legibility. Liquid Glass has been so disliked that Apple has been adding settings to dial down the liquefying effect, which creates poor contrast.
Tim Cook, who is now 65 and could retire from his CEO role as soon as next year, downplayed Dye’s defection. “Design is fundamental to who we are at Apple, and today, we have an extraordinary design team working on the most innovative product lineup in our history,” he told Bloomberg in a statement. It’s widely speculated that Apple’s head of hardware, John Ternus, could take over as CEO whenever Cook decides he’s had enough.
For now, we can’t help but wonder, what the hell is going on at Apple? Who, besides Cook and SVP of Software Engineering Craig Federighi, is left from the old guard? Maybe it’s time for fresh faces to help Apple “Think Different” again.
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