Meta poaches Apple’s user interface design head Alan Dye

Meta has landed a major talent coup by hiring away Apple Inc.’s top design executive, Alan Dye, in a move that highlights the social media giant’s aggressive expansion into AI-powered consumer hardware.
Dye, who has led Apple’s user interface design team since 2015 and played a key role in shaping the look and feel of iPhone, iPad, and Mac, is joining Meta, Bloomberg News‘ Mark Gurman reports citing people familiar with the matter.
Apple is set to replace him with veteran designer Stephen Lemay, the sources said, speaking on condition of anonymity as the changes have not yet been publicly announced.
Mark Gurman for Bloomberg News:
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Apple confirmed the move in a statement provided to Bloomberg News.
“Steve Lemay has played a key role in the design of every major Apple interface since 1999,” Chief Executive Officer Tim Cook said in the statement. “He has always set an extraordinarily high bar for excellence and embodies Apple’s culture of collaboration and creativity.”
The move represents a seismic shift in Silicon Valley and shows that Meta is committed to becoming a name-brand maker of hardware devices. For Apple, the departure extends an exodus of talent suffered by the design team since the exit of visionary executive Jony Ive in 2019.
Dye had taken on a more significant role at Apple after Ive left, helping define how the company’s latest operating systems, apps and devices look and feel. The executive informed Apple this week that he’d decided to leave, though top management had already been bracing for his departure, the people said. Dye will join Meta as chief design officer on Dec. 31.
With the Dye hire, Meta is creating a new design studio and putting him in charge of design for hardware, software and AI integration for its interfaces…
“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,” Cook said in the statement.
Joining Dye at Meta is Billy Sorrentino, a prominent deputy who has served as a senior director on Apple’s design team since 2016.

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MacDailyNews Take: Steve Jobs attracted top talent; Tim Cook repels.
As we wrote in May 2024, when Apple designer Duncan Kerr left the company, “The end of an era, hastened by operations guy Tim Cook laughably putting a team of designers directly under Chief Operating Officer Jeff Williams where they obviously (to the non-myopic) do not belong.”
Apple’s current weak, myopic, and dithering leadership leads directly to this tidal wave of defections. If you’re interested in AI, would you rather work for Sam Altman or Tim Cook? If you’re interested in hardware design, would you rather work for Jony Ive or some random formerly low-level Apple designer who’s two weeks into the job until he leaves for OpenAI, too? A fish rots from the head down. – MacDailyNews, November 24, 2025
Tim’s not a product person, per se. – Steve Jobs
The good news is that the average age of outgoing CEOs across the S&P 1500 is 61.6 and Tim Cook will turn 64 on November 1st.