Live and Let Dye
With the news that Alan Dye is jumping ship from Apple, leaving his design post to join Meta, I couldn't decide on the proper punny headline. For Apple was it 'No Time to Dye'? Or for Meta was it 'Dye Another Day'? What about 'Tomorrow Never Dyes'? Do we get really crazy and go with 'Dyemonds Are Forever'? Or we could even get tangential with 'The Dye Who Loved Me'! 'Dyefall'?! We've gone too far.1 Keep it simple.2
Alan Dye is moving on from Apple and John Gruber, for one, seems thrilled. In fact, the only person being more unflinchingly honest in their assessment of another this week may be Quentin Tarantino's thoughts about Paul Dano in There Will Be Blood. Both are absolutely brutal. A taste from Gruber:
It remains worrisome that Apple needed to luck into Dye leaving the company. But fortune favors the prepared, and Apple remains prepared by having an inordinate number of longtime talented HI designers at the company. The oddest thing about Alan Dye’s stint leading software design is that there are, effectively, zero design critics who’ve been on his side. The debate regarding Apple’s software design over the last decade isn’t between those on Dye’s side and those against. It’s only a matter of debating how bad it’s been, and how far it’s fallen from its previous remarkable heights. It’s rather extraordinary in today’s hyper-partisan world that there’s nearly universal agreement amongst actual practitioners of user-interface design that Alan Dye is a fraud who led the company deeply astray. It was a big problem inside the company too. I’m aware of dozens of designers who’ve left Apple, out of frustration over the company’s direction, to work at places like LoveFrom, OpenAI, and their secretive joint venture io.
While Mark Gurman framed this as a major coup for Meta in breaking the news for Bloomberg, Gruber notes that the mood amongst those that he's talked to within Apple is "happy – if not downright giddy". In particular because Stephen Lemay is the one replacing Dye. That's because Lemay, beyond his 25+ years of experience at Apple, is actually an interface (and interaction) designer, unlike Dye, who had a brand and fashion background (which is probably what led to his ascent under Jony Ive around the time the Apple Watch was shipping – as a fashion device).
But really, this all goes back further than that, to when Scott Forstall was ousted and Ive was put in charge of both hardware and software design for the first time. As Jason Snell notes in Six Colors:
The firing of Scott Forstall in 2012 handed human interface design to Jony Ive. Again, I can’t say for sure, but it certainly feels like a man who had a brilliant run designing hardware might not have been the best choice functionally to lead that part of the operation. But in a time of crisis, it was a good time for Apple to say that its world-famous design chief was on it and everything would be fine.
With the benefit of hindsight, the merging of hardware and software design within Apple felt like a mistake that was born out of necessity, and perhaps convenience, at the time. While it's natural to think that within a company "design" should encompass both areas, Apple was clearly build differently – until it wasn't.
And while, as Gruber notes, there's perhaps some fear that Lemay is still more of a "safe" choice because he clearly won't bolt to Meta (or presumably elsewhere any time soon) the move to put a UI guy back in charge of the actual UI obviously can't hurt – certainly not more than the UI has already been hurt under the guidance of Dye in recent years. I'm in the camp that doesn't mind "Liquid Glass", but I know a lot of people who absolutely hate it, quite viscerally. And some that are putting off upgrading OSes because of it.
It's obviously insanely hard to overhaul a UI – let alone across multiple major operating systems – but I'm going to go ahead an guess that Liquid Glass will transform to be both less liquid-y and less glass-y starting in relative short order. I mean, that was already happening with the necessitated "tinting" sliders – a concession in and of itself that seemed awfully damning of the design work here.
But beyond all of that, this Dye move is fascinating at a higher level. Both things can be true here: Dye probably needed to go from Apple and yet it was still a huge coup for Meta, least of which because Dye was pretty clearly not being pushed out the door by Apple. The fact that he was a focal point of this year's WWDC keynote to unveil Liquid Glass suggested that he was clearly "the guy", at least in terms of Apple's UI,3 who we'd be seeing a lot more of in the coming years. How quickly things change...
The fact that Apple has now lost two key presenters of recent marquee product unveils in the past few weeks alone, with Abidur Chowdhury (who was tasked with unveiling the iPhone Air in the all-important iPhone keynote!) also bolting for a startup, seems like an issue as well. Apple clearly – clearly – has a retention problem at the moment, something which historically has been one of the company's main strengths. And to me, that speaks to larger issues up top.
But part of that is also clearly because Mark Zuckerberg, undoubtedly sensing the vulnerability within Apple, has swooped in like a vulture finding a carcass. The fact that he's poaching from Apple must be especially tasty for Zuck as he clearly hates the company with a passion not reserved for other rivals. So when he saw an opportunity to poach one of their key, and perhaps highest profile, designers...
And this is undoubtedly why Apple felt the need not only to respond to Gurman's report about the news, but have no less than Tim Cook weigh in with the following:
"Steve Lemay has played a key role in the design of every major Apple interface since 1999. He has always set an extraordinarily high bar for excellence and embodies Apple’s culture of collaboration and creativity. 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."
You'll note nothing about Alan Dye there – not one word. Not the typical vanilla "we thank Alan for all his hard work and wish him well" – nothing. Please let the door hit you in the ass on your way out.
But also, "since 1999" – that's just one year after Cook himself got to Apple. And just two years after Steve Jobs returned. As if to say: Lemay is loyal and Apple to the core. "Every major Apple interface" – and I would just highlight "interface" there in particular. As in, Lemay has been doing this core work since before Apple perhaps muddied the UI waters and an implied return to greatness may indeed be the focus in such a statement. Lemay "embodies Apple’s culture of collaboration and creativity" – implying (and maybe acknowledging for employees) that perhaps Dye didn't foster such things. "Design is fundamental" – echoing the recent messaging Apple and Cook have been delivering, which reads a lot like a mission statement to return to their strengths (after the AI debacle) and to implore people to stay for the great work ahead.
Back to Gruber:
The most galling moment in Dye’s entire tenure was the opening of this year’s iPhone event keynote in September, which began with a title card showing the oft-cited Jobs quote “Design is not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works.” The whole problem with the Dye era of HI design at Apple is that it has so largely—not entirely, but largely—been driven purely by how things look. There are a lot of things in Apple’s software—like app icons—that don’t even look good any more. But it’s the “how it works” part that has gone so horribly off the rails. Alan Dye seems like exactly the sort of person Jobs was describing in the first part of that quote: “People think it’s this veneer—that the designers are handed this box and told, ‘Make it look good!’”
Ouch.
Back in July, after the news that COO Jeff Williams would be retiring broke, I tried to think through the design team ramifications – since Williams, sort of oddly, oversaw that team. Would they finally elevate another Chief Design Officer for the first time since Ive left?
It's certainly possible that Apple is going to try to spend these next five months finding that design executive. It's also possible that they promote Dye to such a role – he did have one of the most prominent slots at the WWDC keynote this year thanks to "Liquid Glass" – though as Gruber notes, in hindsight, it may have been a mistake to have one person overseeing hardware and software design – something that only happened because Ive stepped in on the software side after Scott Forstall was forced out in 2012. And Dye is firmly on the software side.
There was clearly a reason Dye never got that role and Apple certainly must be happy about that fact now. Again, the Lemay appointment seems to be just as much about clearly splitting those sides of design back in two.
As for Dye's prospects at Meta, here's Gruber:
Alan Dye is not untalented. But his talents at Apple were in politics. His political skill was so profound that it was his decision to leave, despite the fact that his tenure is considered a disaster by actual designers inside and outside the company. He obviously figured out how to please Apple’s senior leadership. His departure today landed as a total surprise because his stature within the company seemed so secure. And so I think he might do very well at Meta. Not because he can bring world-class interaction design expertise—because he obviously can’t—but because the path to success at Meta has never been driven by design. It’s about getting done what Zuck wants done. Dye might excel at that. Dye was an anchor holding Apple back, but might elevate design at Meta.
And he seemingly has a very specific job there, not leading all of Meta's design, but specifically the design within Reality Labs, the infamous money pit that Meta is trying to reorient around AI (alongside the whole company). Dye will report to Andrew Bosworth, Meta's CTO (who also runs that group), in charge of a new "creative studio", which all sounds a bit convoluted and yes, political.
At the same time, it's interesting and noteworthy that Dye will be tasked with the future of Meta's wearables, notably their smart glasses, which Apple is apparently sprinting towards as well. Perhaps that's one reason for the Cook statement snub... We're lining up for a world in the not-too-distant future where Apple's wearables are competing against Alan Dye-designed wearables from Meta – oh yes, and newfangled AI devices from OpenAI designed by Jony Ive... At least Humane didn't work out, I guess.
As for Dye's lasting legacy at Apple... it could very well be Liquid Glass reminding everyone that yes, design is how it works.
1 "Choose your next witticism carefully Mr Bond, it may be your last." ↩
2 "No Mr. Bond, I expect you to Dye!" ↩
3 The last time I recalled seeing him in a keynote video was in 2022 when he was unveiling the Dynamic – Dyenamic, for shame – Island as a part of the iPhone 14 unveil... ↩