In something of a bombshell report, Bloomberg has revealed that Meta recently poached Alan Dye, Apple’s top design executive. Originally an iPhone package designer, Dye rose through the ranks where he eventually became the company’s VP of Human Interface Design. Since 2015, Dye has had a hand in the design behind every software feature across the entirety of Apple’s product lineup. Come 2026, he will be Meta’s new Chief Design Officer, where he will help shape the user interface across Meta’s ever-growing lineup of hardware and software products. Incidentally, Billy Sorrentino, previously a Senior Director on Apple’s design team, will also be joining Meta.
It’s no secret that Meta has been aggressively hiring Apple engineers and researchers over the past few months, primarily to shore up its AI team. But poaching Dye, a top executive who played an integral and visible role in the way Apple customers use and experience software, is a remarkably bold move. While top Apple executives leave the company every now and again, this is a rare instance of a top Apple executive leaving for another tech rival.
With Dye moving on, Apple CEO Tim Cook said in a statement said that Steve Lemay will take over Dye’s position: “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.”
Apple’s leadership team is in flux
Dye’s departure comes in the wake of a report that Tim Cook might step down as CEO later this year. While there seems to be some debate as to when Cook will step down, there are credible reports indicating that it will happen sometime in 2026. Should Cook step down, the frontrunner for the CEO position is reportedly John Ternus, who currently serves as Apple’s Senior Vice President of Hardware Engineering. A longtime Apple veteran, Ternus helped Apple seamlessly transition from Intel processors to Apple silicon.
Broadly speaking, Apple’s leadership team is currently in a state of transition. Many top executives have left in recent years, and with Dye leaving and Cook seemingly on the way out soon, Apple’s leadership team in 2027 may look drastically different than it does today. All that said, Apple is in a strong position to weather the storm.
Design wise, some critics have taken issue with some of Apple’s design choices under Dye. For instance, former Apple designer Louie Mantia just a few months ago said that Dye’s ascension within Apple was undeserved. What’s more, Mantia said that Dye simply lacks taste, a strong opinion made after Apple introduced iOS 26’s Liquid Glass design at WWDC this past year: “Firstly, I maintain that it makes absolutely no sense that Alan Dye has the power he has because he simply has no taste. But what’s worse is that he wields that power so clumsily, so carelessly. And because it goes unchallenged, unchecked by someone higher than him, the entire industry suffers the consequences.”
