Apple just lost Alan Dye, the guy who ran their user interface design squad since way back, and he bounced to Meta for what sounds like a fat paycheck. Dye handled some pretty big stuff like the iPhone X look, watchOS, that pill-shaped Dynamic Island thing, iOS 26 with the Liquid Glass effect, and Vision Pro's spatial controls. Stephen Lemay steps up to fill the spot.
The talent bleeding keeps getting worse because Apple also swapped out its AI boss, John Giannandrea, for Microsoft's Amar Subramanya earlier this week, plus Abidur Chowdhury, who designed the iPhone Air, left for some mystery AI startup. Mark Gurman says OpenAI snagged around 40 Apple engineers in the past month alone, grabbing people like manufacturing expert Matt Theobald and human interface lead Cyrus Daniel Irani.
The core iPhone design crew keeps shrinking as people jump ship to Jony Ive's company, io, which OpenAI recently bought up to build their supposed iPhone killer device without a screen.
The talent bleeding keeps getting worse because Apple also swapped out its AI boss, John Giannandrea, for Microsoft's Amar Subramanya earlier this week, plus Abidur Chowdhury, who designed the iPhone Air, left for some mystery AI startup. Mark Gurman says OpenAI snagged around 40 Apple engineers in the past month alone, grabbing people like manufacturing expert Matt Theobald and human interface lead Cyrus Daniel Irani.
The core iPhone design crew keeps shrinking as people jump ship to Jony Ive's company, io, which OpenAI recently bought up to build their supposed iPhone killer device without a screen.
