Meta has landed a major talent coup by hiring away Apple Inc.’s top design executive, Alan Dye, in a move that highlights the social media giant’s aggressive expansion into AI-powered consumer hardware.
Dye, who has led Apple’s user interface design team since 2015 and played a key role in shaping the look and feel of iPhone, iPad, and Mac, is joining Meta, Bloomberg News‘ Mark Gurman reports citing people familiar with the matter.
Apple is set to replace him with veteran designer Stephen Lemay, the sources said, speaking on condition of anonymity as the changes have not yet been publicly announced.
Mark Gurman for Bloomberg News:
Apple confirmed the move in a statement provided to Bloomberg News.
“Steve Lemay has played a key role in the design of every major Apple interface since 1999,” Chief Executive Officer Tim Cook said in the statement. “He has always set an extraordinarily high bar for excellence and embodies Apple’s culture of collaboration and creativity.”
The move represents a seismic shift in Silicon Valley and shows that Meta is committed to becoming a name-brand maker of hardware devices. For Apple, the departure extends an exodus of talent suffered by the design team since the exit of visionary executive Jony Ive in 2019.
Dye had taken on a more significant role at Apple after Ive left, helping define how the company’s latest operating systems, apps and devices look and feel. The executive informed Apple this week that he’d decided to leave, though top management had already been bracing for his departure, the people said. Dye will join Meta as chief design officer on Dec. 31.
With the Dye hire, Meta is creating a new design studio and putting him in charge of design for hardware, software and AI integration for its interfaces…
“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,” Cook said in the statement.
Joining Dye at Meta is Billy Sorrentino, a prominent deputy who has served as a senior director on Apple’s design team since 2016.
MacDailyNews Take: Steve Jobs attracted top talent; Tim Cook repels.
As we wrote in May 2024, when Apple designer Duncan Kerr left the company, “The end of an era, hastened by operations guy Tim Cook laughably putting a team of designers directly under Chief Operating Officer Jeff Williams where they obviously (to the non-myopic) do not belong.”
Apple’s current weak, myopic, and dithering leadership leads directly to this tidal wave of defections. If you’re interested in AI, would you rather work for Sam Altman or Tim Cook? If you’re interested in hardware design, would you rather work for Jony Ive or some random formerly low-level Apple designer who’s two weeks into the job until he leaves for OpenAI, too? A fish rots from the head down. – MacDailyNews, November 24, 2025
Under Steve Jobs, design at Apple was at the highest level of the organization, personally led by the CEO.
Under Tim Cook, design at Apple is no longer at the highest level of the organization, personally led by the CEO.
Designers with a name known outside their respective companies include Jony Ive and Alan Dye, both of whom, tellingly, are no longer designing at Tim Cook’s Apple.
Tim’s not a product person, per se. – Steve Jobs
The good news is that the average age of outgoing CEOs across the S&P 1500 is 61.6 and Tim Cook will turn 64 on November 1st. 🕚 – MacDailyNews, May 7, 2024
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Apple has not had good UX design since Steve died. Apple is lucky Microsoft is their competition because they suck as well. Jobs was dedicated to making the Mac my computer. Apple has been hell bent for years forcing us to use new crappy features that no one wants. So they have become AppleSoft and forgot what made them great. So when I am fed up with all their bloatware I go over to my Windows gaming computer and realize Apple is still the best of the worst. SIMPLICITY! That is what built Apple and they forgot about it with all their silly bloatware on all my Apple devices. SMH.
Apple’s UI / UX design started going downhill when Jony Ive took over UI design. Worst decision ever. There are a lot of people inside and outside of Apple who are glad he’s leaving and they should be. This article sums it perfectly
https://lmnt.me/blog/a-responsibility-to-the-industry.html
Terrific blog and very cogent. As an apple user since 2005 it has been disappointing after Steve’s death. I could not understand it until I read this blog with the move toward luxury. The problem is when people get wealthy they think their shit doesn’t stink and they can do whatever they want. At Apple this has turned the company into AppleSoft. Ton of irrelevant bloatware making the experience unacceptable. Not sure what software designers do not understand about what people use. 90% of people use 10% of the functionality. You should design for them like Steve did. 10% use 90% of the software. You should never design for them because it all becomes Evernotish. A great tool destroyed for added functionality no one wanted or ever uses. Marketing is about extreme focus on giving the marketplace benefits they want or did not realize they wanted. Software design should be the same extreme focus on making a Mac … my Mac. As stated eloquently in the blog, millions of us are on the Internet after an update finding out how we can go back to what worked efficiently. Apple is lost and Cook was a terrible pick. Yes I have enjoyed the benefits of the stock lift but the software like Safari and Mail are broken a lot. Hopefully the next person up can remember why Steve started the Mac to compete against Window’s bloatware. Thanks for sharing the blog.
If you loved that blog post, you’ll love this one
https://daringfireball.net/2025/12/bad_dye_job
“Not sure what software designers do not understand about what people use.”
It’s what back in the early 80s we called, “the next bench syndrome”. It almost sunk HP’s entire computer line back then as their computers were 100% based upon what the engineering staff wanted and not what the public wanted.
The gist of the syndrome is the engineer/programmer turns to the person the next bench/desk over and asks them if they like a feature or implementation. Thus, the feedback loop of what is good is based upon the engineers/programmers utilization of features. It is not based upon what the general population will use.
Back in the 80s Apple was the antithesis of the next bench syndrome. Apple’s downfall started when they did not follow through on the “Pink” operating system. People I knew at Apple at the time told me that the core parts of “Pink” were running in Apple’s labs as far back as 1989 — long before Apple’s “dark days” had begun. Then Apple management decided on a seemingly never ending series of truly dumb implementations of extensions and evolutions of System 7 along with marketing everything from the Pippin to the QuickTake.
Apple somewhat came back with the return of Steve Jobs and Mac OS X. Then the iPod, followed by the iPhone and iPad.
Today, Apple is as much of a services company as a computer (and computer related equipment) company, maybe more so. I consider the Apple TV interface to be one of the worst interfaces of the streaming services and the Apple remote for Apple TV to be very frustrating. Neither is the worst out there, but being better than the very worst should never be the goal.
Alan Dye was much better than the near brain-dead John Giannanderrrrrrrrrra, but I think Apple is now free from Alan’s Dyed in the wool weirdness and he can go an F-up Meta, which Meta will richly deserve
Bye, Dye!
I besmirched Liquid Glass when 1st announced…pics seemed ridiculous.
Now, in use…I love it. Credit; Dye.
Pretty soon I expect to see Cook at Home Depot to find butts to fill all the departures.
I have a friend in the industry, and Meta is letting people know they are willing to pay an unbelievable amount of money for the right people . . . My take is that these people will take the money, and in a few years will jump ship.