You almost have to feel sorry for Alan Dye at this point. It was pretty clear he expected news of his departure from Apple to be something of a bombshell, and Meta clearly thought their acquisition of Apple’s former VP of Human Interface Design would be perceived as a coup.
Instead, the prevailing opinion among Apple commenters appears to be succinctly summarized as a collective sigh of relief …
Bye, then
Dye made a rather self-congratulatory post on Instagram in the form of what many felt to be an entirely inappropriate quote from Steve Jobs.
Halide Camera creator Sebastian de With was one of many to take issue with this.
this post by Alan Dye on instagram seems almost designed to offend. The horrible “Create Mode” typesetting. Using a Steve Jobs quote to refer to going to Meta. Yikes pic.twitter.com/kZN3FgzxoY — Sebastiaan de With (@sdw) December 4, 2025
Other commenters were quick to pick up on the lack of curly quotes, and the final period being outside of the quote instead of inside it where it belongs. While these could be perceived as petty complaints, they really don’t seem so given that one of the biggest criticisms of Dye’s work was a lack of attention to detail. (Elias Datler was the original source of the screen-grab BAG used.)
Bloomberg carried one of the very few reports to portray the news as bad news for Apple.
Meta has poached Apple’s most prominent design executive in a major coup […] The move represents a significant loss for Apple, which is already experiencing an exodus of talent from its design team, including the exit of visionary executive Jony Ive in 2019.
The rest of the internet – and reportedly the rest of Apple – not so much.
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