5 ms·
Bad Dye Job
- classified 11mo ago> but everyone I’ve spoken to is happy — if not downright giddy — at the news that Lemay is replacing Dye. Count me in.
- aidio 11mo agoThis is a positive transformation for Apple
- ohhellnawman 11mo ago[flagged]
- jsheard 11mo agoWell this is Hacker News, after all
- nickpeterson 11mo agoI mostly get my tech news from hacks.
- piyuv 11mo agoApple bootlicker for sure, but he knows his stuff
- phoronixrly 11mo agoWell, it's a daringfireball article after all... Who else should he cite apart from Apple bootlickers?
- gyomu 11mo agoI really have to wonder who Gruber’s sources are. His statement “prior to today never heard much about [Steve Lemay]” leads me to think he doesn’t have intimate access to anyone deeply familiar with design decisions, because anyone who’s spent a little bit of time behind closed doors in that space absolutely knows who Lemay is. But then he quotes sources who are supposedly “in a position to know the choices”, which would imply they are quite embedded in the design org… Maybe it’s all voluntary misdirection on his behalf.
- avalys 11mo agoI’m not sure you’re drawing the right conclusion. It’s possible that Gruber’s regular sources know who Lemay is and just never talked about him much.
- pavlov 11mo agoIf you think about Gruber as a gossip columnist, then it's quite natural that people who just do their job well don't generate much gossip that would reach his ears.
- gyomu 11mo agoFair enough, I guess I was just surprised to read from someone who makes their living from Apple insider baseball and Cupertinology that they have “never heard much” about one of the most influential software designers at the company over the last 20 years.
- troupo 11mo agoMe feeling is that his sources are mostly programmers and perhaps some managers. It's also possible he has very few sources left: he's an outsider to the company, and it's hard to maintain sources since people leave, move to different positions etc.
- philistine 11mo agoHis Something rotten in the state of Cupertino piece earlier this year broke his relationship with the upper echelons of Apple, and to be frank he's no longer inevitable as an Apple commenter. He cannot understand the European Union at all, so he devolves into saying they're idiots. Really? The EU, the whole thing, idiots? Really?
- jbm 11mo agohttps://daringfireball.net/2025/03/something_is_rotten_in_the_state_of_cupertino https://daringfireball.net/2025/03/something_is_rotten_in_th... This article? If it caused consternation it boggles the mind. These are all completely normal reactions to Apple's AI missteps. If detailed but milquetoast criticisms are grounds for excommunication, maybe the company really does have serious management issues.
- joshstrange 11mo ago> Putting Alan Dye in charge of user interface design was the one big mistake Jony Ive made as Apple’s Chief Design Officer. _One_??? Talk about rose tinted liquid glass(es).
- forgetfulness 11mo agoThe man left prior to Apple facing, and losing, a class action lawsuit over his favored keyboard design. Screens also died left and right in designs approved by him, and his next great innovation would be the Touch Bar. It was a precipitous fall from grace
- p_l 11mo agoEveryone focuses on M1 as supposedly super chip that fixed all the "intel problems" of Macbooks, but similarly large difference was how first M1 series reversed a bunch of Johnny Ive era designs including how forcibly thin it was.
- karmakaze 11mo agoLeaving him there was an even bigger mistake that Apple allowed and never corrected--Alan Dye had to correct that himself. Any dis post-departure only points the blame back at Apple's management.
- notnullorvoid 11mo agoIt was a big mistake to leave Jony Ive in charge of design after Steve Jobs left. Jobs had a good design sense that was key to grounding Ive's work. Ive's vision of Apple as a luxury brand certainly aligned with Cook's focus on profit, and the results of that sadly still echo through the company today.
- tedd4u 11mo agoSo was Dye behind the super-flat butterfly keyboard, too? ;)
- chris_wot 11mo agoMy favorite reaction to today’s news is this one-liner from a guy on Twitter/X: “The average IQ of both companies has increased.” My friend, that was NZ prime minister Robert Muldoon who was quoted as saying “every time a New Zealander emigrates to sun themselves on the beaches of Bondi, the average IQ of both countries increases.”
- dewey 11mo agoThis is not a new saying: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Will_Rogers_phenomenon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Will_Rogers_phenomenon
- chris_wot 11mo agoIndeed! https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/political/570584/it-raises-the-iq-of-both-countries-how-muldoon-stole-a-joke-that-was-already-stolen https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/political/570584/it-raises-the-iq...
- mitchbob 11mo agoSome previous discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46153852 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46153852
- djmips 11mo agoI am starting to think John Gruber doesn't like Alan Dye.
- pupppet 11mo agoWhere were Gruber’s posts about Dye so obviously being a problem before his exit?
- elicash 11mo agoQuickly googled his website and found this from January 2021: > [...] I’m reminded of all the UI and interaction designs and changes in iOS and MacOS that are just bad. There’s a real sense that Apple’s current HI team, under Alan Dye, is a “design is what it looks like” group, not a “design is how it works” group. And this, from June of this year: > Re-watching Jobs’s introduction of Aqua for the umpteenth time, I still find it enthralling. I found Alan Dye’s introduction of Liquid Glass to be soporific, if not downright horseshitty. He has been even more critical on his podcast. This has been a repeated refrain and increasing over the years. My first reaction, when I read the news, was "Apple bloggers and podcasters will be THRILLED."
- pupppet 11mo agoHe’s had the position for 10 years and you found two mentions?
- whynotminot 11mo agoHow many times would appease you?
- lateforwork 11mo agoAt least 50% as harsh before his departure than he is afterwards.
- 11mo ago
- mpweiher 11mo agoHardware Design: check Hardware: check Software Design: check Software: please!
- tobr 11mo agoFor a good while, Mac hardware was held back because of hardware design. That changed soon after Ive left. Maybe the same can happen with software now.
- euroderf 11mo agoThe healing begins with a joint HW/SW effort: bring iPhone touch ID back, and strip Liquid Glass down to the bare wood and fix it.
- tobr 11mo agoLiquid Glass I agree with. Not sure if the Touch ID comment is intended as a joke.
- gcr 11mo agoSee there are users who like Liquid Glass, just as there are users who like TouchID. A lot of Apple’s best work turned out to be quite polarizing at the time. iOS 7’s design language was almost universally panned, but if it were “the wrong decision,” other phones wouldn’t have adopted similar design language. Material appeared just a year later in 2014. It wasn’t bad, it was just arbitrary. (“I like Liquid Glass! I like Liquid Glass!” I insist as i slowly shrink down into the size of a corn cob)
- tobr 11mo agoOn the topic of Alan Dye and the home button though, the swipe gesture interface they introduced when they removed the home button strikes me as one of few genuinely successful system-level Apple design innovations in recent years. That at least seems to have happened under his leadership. Can’t think of much else good to say about what I associate with design under him.
- cies 11mo agoI also think Apple knew they rather wanted to move on without him. They probably gave him some targets that were to high and then reduced/dropped his bonuses based on low achievements. He got the message, Meta got the carrot. He might even be a better fit for Meta.
- monster_truck 11mo agoHopefully this trend continues, there's too many dogshit people in positions they shouldn't have at Apple. Two of the three worst interviews I've ever had were with them. Basically got flown out twice to be insulted by team leads or upper management. Everyone insists I'm supposed to keep trying until I don't encounter someone like that but that doesn't seem right to me, not for a company like this. I can wait
- ls-a 11mo agoI know a fraudster that everyone speaks highly of. Outright fraud and advocates against fraud themself. Whenever I read "everyone speaks highly of" I stop reading.
- skylurk 11mo agoLast week I was driving and a popup from apple music to accept more terms and conditions showed up on top of Maps. It was a tense 25 minutes of interchanges without nav before traffic was clear enough to deny the terms, and I purged the app and cancelled the subscription afterward.
- dfxm12 11mo agoDid it block the audio from your maps app, too?
- altairprime 11mo agoIf your nav audio is muted when the popup appears, you can’t unmute it until the popup is cleared.
- skylurk 11mo agoI don't know because I don't drive with turn-by-turn audio. For the record, I actually like Maps for driving. I find the level of detail just right for how I use it. My main complaint happens when you are not driving: if you let it have access to your location, Maps is constantly resetting your pan/zoom if the app becomes inactive. So on MacOS I block location, but a phone has to have your location for nav of course.
- pstuart 11mo agoSomething similar, except it was a map alert that covered the map to see upcoming exits -- and there wasn't a clear way to dismiss it. It was FU UX.
- nake89 11mo agoThe first time I connected my iPhone to my car through apple car play, it started popping up whatsapp notifications over my map! Very bad first impression! I was shocked that they think some notification is more important than being able to know where you are driving. Notifications should not be on by default!
- bubbi 11mo ago
- muglug 11mo agoThis is like a Man United fan discussing a player who just left for a rival team. You sort of expect a large amount of bitterness.
- raldi 11mo agoMore like a fan who had long been complaining loudly and publicly about one of the coaches rejoicing when they left.
- owenthejumper 11mo agoFunny enough, my phone upgraded to iOS 26 tonight, and I am like - what is this garbage, who though this is a good idea? And lo and behold, now I know... Immediately went Tinted mode, yet there is transparency where it shouldn't be, text overlays other text, etc...
- teekert 11mo agoI also went tinted as soon as 26.1 came out. There is a step further, under "accessibility" -> "Reduce Transparency". For me Tinted is ok. Original was indeed very hard to read in places (ie, quick peeks at the notification tray).
- owenthejumper 11mo agoReduce transparency brings it back to acceptable levels, thanks!
- gulfofamerica 11mo agoWhen users work together they can overcome Apple's software!
- cainxinth 11mo agoI'm still on 18. I keep waiting for the all clear sign to upgrade. I take it, not yet?
- tedd4u 11mo ago26.1 feels significantly less laggy (UI frame rate), especially on low power mode, than 26.0.1. But it's still not back to 18.x level of performance. Battery seems to be improved on 26.1 over 26.0.1 also but that seems to be hardware-generation dependent.
- MomsAVoxell 11mo agoI think Apple have jumped the shark, personally. Sure, trillion-dollar business and all that - but at the folk level, they have become the very thing they were always resisting: a tired old monopoly enforcing principles on their customers which are not in the customers' best interests. OS vendors have lost the plot. Where a company decides to try to build an operating system for mass acceptance at scale these days, they build an ad delivery platform - not an operating system. The interests of far too many third parties have been elevated at the kernel-extension layer, and lower, and this is as troubling as it ever was. Its the 21st century and people still don't understand how to manage the filesystem, having given all agency to the task to the backend/cloud, which harvests their data instead of granting the user more agency. In fact, most people have less agency over their data - and simply do not care about it - because they have been lulled into accepting the state of affairs by OS vendors who simply don't want to write a better Finder/File Explorer for the end user - choosing instead, to write an operating system for ad agencies to harvest user eyeballs. Apple have traditionally avoided the usual pretence of 'ads in the start bar' by leveraging their platforms, and this is starting to fall apart at the seams. Convergence is going to be a joke, and will turn off a lot of computer users until a generation is raised, who will just accept the doctrine of their masters, and in so doing, lose knowledge to the generations. I yearn for an OS vendor to build an operating system that really makes the user control over their computer and their data, a number one priority. Apple isn't it. Microsoft certainly isn't it. There are multiple Linux OS vendors who could be it, if only they'd get their hardware act into shape. There are hardware vendors struggling to attain this goal, too. My next laptop won't be an Apple, after 30+ years of adoption of the platform. I fear the future that Apple is laying out ahead of us - just as I feared that of Microsoft and Oracle and IBM too, through the decades. If there is hope, it lays with the (low-end open source hardware/software-agency-protecting) proles.
- cosmic_cheese 11mo agoI have concerns too, but the file manager on macOS is not among them. The Finder has barely changed since its OS X 10.2 incarnation over two decades ago, except for gaining features (many of which were demanded by power users). A few settings need toggling on a fresh install (turning on status bar and path bar are musts, as is ~/Library visibility), but that’s the worst of it. Neither it nor the rest of macOS do much to go out of their way to obfuscate the filesystem. iOS still needs work despite its file manager having become much more capable, but part of that comes down to the differing filesystem arrangement where user documents are kept within app bundles. If raw filesystem access were enabled, that model wouldn’t make a whole lot of sense even to many who are familiar with navigating filesystems. I could see the argument that it should be switched to a traditional desktop OS model, but that’s a deep architectural change. Windows on the other hand… Explorer just keeps getting slower even if it’s not losing functionality, and Windows has always been poor when it comes to misrepresenting or obfuscating the filesystem. I hate trying to track down where files have been deposited in Windows boxes, and I would agree that it’s been contributing to users not understanding filesystems.
- JSR_FDED 11mo agoI’m excited for the new energy this will bring to UI design at Apple. The same way that Jony Ive leaving opened up the opportunity for thicker more functional machines. Never underestimate the power of a group of passionate people who’ve been repressed and now get a chance to set things right.
- sunnyps 11mo ago[flagged]
- Y-bar 11mo agoHe is literally the primary person at the latest Apple event to introduce Liquid Glass, his face and name is on Apple's promotional material. If he wants to live a secluded life where his name is not referenced maybe he should not agree to blast it to millions of people and star in video interviews. Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jGztGfRujSE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jGztGfRujSE (Apple promo) and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z73NELDwyhQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z73NELDwyhQ (iJustine interview)
- PedroBatista 11mo agoWhile I’m not a fan of mobbing on someone as it easily escalates to bullying an gratuitous attacks, parodying his name is the least of my concerns. And he is a public figure. Being the head designer at Apple grants you that status and don’t even doubt for a second anyone who wants that type of job doesn’t play the fame/status game.
- apical_dendrite 11mo agoThe pun on Dye's name is probably the least mean thing Gruber has to say about him.
- RobotToaster 11mo agoDoesn't being a CxO at a fortune 100 company implicitly make you a public figure?
- jombojam2 11mo agoHe's earned it.
- jccalhoun 11mo agoAll things considered, this is a pretty mild pun. It isn't making fun of his name or replacing it with a slur or something.
- ksec 11mo agoHere is an unpopular opinion, how about Craig Federighi replaced with Scott Forstall. It isn't just about UI design. But the whole software stack as well. iOS is still 90% the same as it was launched, and yet the apps management is still inconvenient to say the least. Along with copying all Android features, if I wanted an Android I would have brought one. The software stack, how many years has Swift been announced? how many years have they announced Swift UI? Xcode? HN discussed macOS problems not long ago [1]. It would have been far better they just stick to Objective-C for the past 10 years and actually get things done. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46114599 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46114599
- jonhohle 11mo agoCocoa was so good. I even liked old-school Interface Builder’s IoC. Now there are controls where it’s obvious drag and/or drop should be supported but it isn’t or simple things like opening a custom SwiftUI (né Preferences) settings window from legacy AppKit code is unsupported. Unfortunately, Objective-C added modern language features too late. IB never used the term IoC or anything else devs coming from other ecosystems would understand. A lot of great stuff that NeXT built 30 years ago is still great today, but never had the notoriety of lesser frameworks and languages.
- morgan814 11mo ago> Here is an unpopular opinion, how about Craig Federighi replaced with Scott Forstall. I'm with you there. Forstall's skeuomorphism gets a lot of hate. It certainly got pretty weird visually. Especially on OS X where a leather-bound Calendar had to interact with other normal windows. But unlike what Ive and Dye have given us, Forstall's UX remained functional overall. I'm glad skeuomorphism is gone, but much of it was done to help the user. Just maybe a bit misguided.
- kibwen 11mo agoThis is cope dressed up in the stereotypical Gruber sycophancy. The decision to align iOS and MacOS with the glassy design of VisionOS was a broader corporate strategy that would have required buy-in from more execs than just the "chief design officer". If you accept that this particular bozo wasn't forced out but instead was tempted away by the scent of lucre wafting from Zuck's pockets, then that implies that there are still plenty of clowns left at Apple to fill out the circus.
- matwood 11mo agoYes, but it could have been as simple that the UIs should look like they come from the same company - and that is the correct path IMO. At that point, it's the Chief Design/Product person's responsibility to execute on that order.
- cosmic_cheese 11mo agoThe problem is, Liquid Glass isn’t all that closely aligned with the visionOS UI, despite both having glass-like qualities. Most notably, the iOS and macOS versions are missing the usability affordances that the visionOS version has, and more superficially the visionOS version looks nicer.
- jombojam2 11mo agoIt will be an equally good news if Zuck poaches the person or team that manages Apple's feedback assistant tool, the one that's used to report bugs. Asking customers to file issues there and then not at all responding to those for months and years even after repeated pings should definitely generate some interest from Meta. Zuck, some more poaching please?
- jtbayly 11mo agoI recently took the time, despite having committed to never bother again, to write some feedback to Apple. I can’t even remember what it was about, but it was a big deal for me to break my commitment. I spent 15 minutes writing it up, getting screenshots marked up… And the form refused to submit. I was on my iPhone. I clicked the button. Nothing happened. I clicked it again. Nothing. I reminded myself of the reason I had my commitment: Apple does not want my feedback.
- Huppie 11mo agoI was actually in the feedback form a few days (just to leave a quick rant what an absolute mess this 'liquid glass' iOS-update is after I sadly chose to update...) And look what happens, it turns out if you switch app-focus and go back to the app (now immediately focused on the text input) your on-screen keyboard becomes pretty much unreadable (white on light grey...) The feedback is probably going straight to the bin but I couldn't help myself to file a second bug with a screenshot from the first feedback submission with a broken keyboard. Screenshot of this absolute disaster: https://imgur.com/a/CyXiVy2 https://imgur.com/a/CyXiVy2
- ChrisMarshallNY 11mo ago> particularly his attention to detail and craftsmanship I can get on board with this. I feel as if that has fallen off a cliff, in the last decade. I just released a rewritten version of an app, and spent many days, running it over, and over, and over again, looking for subtle "pain points." Sadly, some will remain, because SwiftUI is so limited, but I think it came out well. I do feel that "polishing the fenders" is a big deal. I spent most of my career at a company that would have day-long cage mat- er, meetings, over seemingly insignificant details of user experience.
- deleted 11mo ago[deleted]
- TYPE_FASTER 11mo agoAt one point years ago, there was an iOS release where the recently used apps would render, then re-order themselves after a second or two. You could tell it was caching then dynamically updating. It was frustrating from a UX perspective because you would go to tap on an app and by the time you tapped, it would open a different app because they had re-ordered themselves. It was fixed in an update, but to me that's the canary in the coal mine that priority is wrong. Apple will be ok without Steve as long as somebody is obsessed with the UX being very good. When I see the quality of the UX experience degrading while other UX changes are made that don't improve the basic UX, then there's a problem. I subscribe to Apple Music, and have built playlists on the service. The fact that I have to enable sync (which then wastes 70G of space on my iPhone) to use my playlists is BS. I don't see a technical reason for it. The only conclusion I can come to is they want to drive storage subscriptions by taking up space using music sync. If anybody wants to explain why sync needs to be enabled, that would be cool, but is a really concerning product management decision IMO.
- nunez 11mo agoSo I, too, was motivated to watch Steve Jobs unveil Aqua [^0] and compare it against Alan Dye's Liquid Glass reveal [^1]. The difference is unbelievable. Jobs might have been an asshole, but his enthusiasm for the details is incontestable. He couldn't wait to show people the Save window, in its many forms. That he cared about the small details in everything is easy to see. Contrast that with Alan Dye's inspiration reel for Liquid Glass. He's clearly reading from a script, which is quite a downgrade but understandable given the production value of keynotes these days. However, the real problem is that this intro is all about how it looks, not how it functions. Microsoft tried this move with Vista (and their Aero design, which mostly failed), then again with Metro (which also by and large failed). Meanwhile, the key concepts of Aqua remain timelessly in macOS 25 years later. Function over form always! [^0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dHrVGk0WwYM&t=381s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dHrVGk0WwYM&t=381s [^1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jGztGfRujSE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jGztGfRujSE
- ChrisArchitect 11mo agoRelated previously: Apple Design Official Alan Dye Poached by Meta in Major Coup https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46142843 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46142843 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46139145 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46139145
- legacynl 11mo agoAnother post of his that isnt shadow banned!
- deleted 11mo ago[deleted]
- jjtheblunt 11mo agoIn the article, he asks why Apple didn't replace Dye with a "Dye acolyte". Nerd that i am, I immediately thought perhaps the phrase "Dye acolyte" raises a null pointer exception.
- 05354062309 11mo ago[dead]
- andrewchilds 11mo agoMy hope is this will lead to the reversal of the insane "HDR auto-brightness" behavior that causes any photo marked as HDR to go extreme brightness mode while the rest of the screen darkens: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/254050878 https://discussions.apple.com/thread/254050878 https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/436949/why-are-some-videos-appearing-to-make-my-screen-extremely-bright https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/436949/why-are-som...
- musicale 11mo agoI hope this improves things. The difference in attention to detail between classic Mac OS (as easily seen in Apple's "Macintosh" dynamic screen saver/wallpaper) and current macOS Tahoe is stark. But I suspect that Apple Services have too much power so the platforms will continue to be corrupted with ever-more-intrusive advertising.