Apple Wanted to Buy Halide to Boost iPhone 18 Pro's Camera App—Now There's a Lawsuit

[MacRumors]

Apple's plans to enhance the iPhone 18 Pro's Camera app led it to consider acquiring Halide, but the talks ultimately collapsed and were followed by a fierce legal dispute between the startup's co-founders, according to The Information reports.

In the summer of 2025, Apple reportedly held discussions to acquire Lux Optics, the developer behind the popular iPhone camera apps Halide, Kino, and Spectre. The company concluded that it could get a better offer from Apple in the future following updates to the app. Two months after the talks concluded without a deal, Apple set about recruiting Lux's co-founder and designer Sebastian de With.

Lux CEO and co-founder Ben Sandofsky is said to have fired de With in December over financial misconduct. de With announced that he had joined Apple's design team in January.

Sandofsky has now filed a lawsuit in the California Superior Court of Santa Cruz against de With, accusing him of improperly using more than $150,000 in Lux company funds to pay for personal expenses since 2022, as well as providing confidential material and source code from Lux to Apple.

During the discussions to acquire Lux, Apple employees purportedly told the startup that its intellectual property was a major consideration in evaluating the company. Apple apparently wanted to acquire Lux to bolster the built-in Camera app, which is said to be "top priority for the company right now." The iPhone 18 Pro will "match professional-grade cameras in terms of certain advanced features," necessitating an upgrade of the built-in Camera app. Apple is not named as a defendant in the case and it is not accused of any wrongdoing.

de With's legal representatives say that the lawsuit is meritless and deny that he "used, transferred, or disclosed any Lux intellectual property" as part of his new job at Apple. They added that the lawsuit was only filed after de With raised concerns with Sandofsky about financial irregularities at Lux and had requested access to its financial records and payments, suggesting that it was a "retaliatory response to those efforts and an attempt to avoid scrutiny of that conduct."

Article Link: Apple Wanted to Buy Halide to Boost iPhone 18 Pro's Camera App—Now There's a Lawsuit

 

[Pezimak]

Apple the home wrecker…

 

[DocMultimedia]

It seemed a bit odd how de With left right as the giant update was about to come out, and was with Apple shortly thereafter. But people come and go.

 

[sprintsucks]

Wild story. More than likely the 2 founders disagreed with waiting to sell to Apple, and in the course of it, discovered some nasty stuff about each other’s behavior in their own company.

Ultimately, Apple always wins. They got one of the founders, and Sandofsky is done for. They’re never going to purchase them now. Why bother, Apple now has one of the founders.

Goes to show again in the history of human actions: be thankful for what you got and don’t be greedy. A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush

 

[unregbaron]

Grim experience from what should have been a happy one.

 

[HouseLannister]

Apple is not named as a defendant in the case and it is not accused of any wrongdoing.

Seems a misleading headline. It’s like saying Tim Cook bought a bottle of water and now 2 are dead from flooding in Georgia.

 

[tyranne201]

traitor and a clown.

he left the company and took all the knowledge to Apple who couldn't buy the company.

now his wages are going to pay lawyers.

 

[tyranne201]

It seemed a bit odd how de With left right as the giant update was about to come out, and was with Apple shortly thereafter. But people come and go.

sidenote: Apple tried to buy the company before.

I think that fills the conflict of interest page.

 

[iBug2]

This doesn't make any sense. Apple can change the Photo app their own to add manual controls like Halide provides if they want. They don't need anyone elses IP to do that. Basically all third party camera apps are the same, and they offer the same basic features the stock app does not offer.

 

[Mac Fly (film)]

traitor and a clown.

he left the company and took all the knowledge to Apple who couldn't buy the company.

now his wages are going to pay lawyers.

This is a lawsuit not a fact. Allow it to play out.

 

[jm22381]

Wild story. More than likely the 2 founders disagreed with waiting to sell to Apple, and in the course of it, discovered some nasty stuff about each other’s behavior in their own company.

Ultimately, Apple always wins. They got one of the founders, and Sandofsky is done for. They’re never going to purchase them now. Why bother, Apple now has one of the founders.

Goes to show again in the history of human actions: be thankful for what you got and don’t be greedy. A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush

In Spain the saying goes: "It's better a bird in the hand than hundred flying" 🙂

 

[KillerTree]

de With seems to spend a ridiculous amount of money traveling.

 

[ellnicklin]

A single finger tap and swipe to zoom, a two finger/pinch zoom to open and close the new mechanical aperture, updating real bokeh in real time. haptics with each f stop. and auto adjusted iso. you’re welcome. ✌️

 

[AppleTO]

Why would Apple need Halide anyways? Surely they have the knowledge on how to create a more advanced camera app…

 

[macrumors3131]

Just wondering why Apple needs to buy another company to write a camera app for their own hardware.

 

[!!!]

This doesn't make any sense. Apple can change the Photo app their own to add manual controls like Halide provides if they want. They don't need anyone elses IP to do that. Basically all third party camera apps are the same, and they offer the same basic features the stock app does not offer.

The only unique thing Halide seems to offer is that they disable all the crappy post-processing iOS does to your photos. Which raises the question: why doesn't Apple just let us disable it? Why would they want to purchase a company that leverages their own APIs? Apple could make their app basically useless with a single toggle.

 

[jonnyb098]

Just wondering why Apple needs to buy another company to write a camera app for their own hardware.

I think it had more to do with their processing like process Zero. Either way now the app is probably gonna be pulled and people who spent all that money on subscriptions and the full app are screwed. I thought Sebastian was a stand up guy but now we know how he was funding all his trips around the world posting those cool pics on X!

 

[Mrkevinfinnerty]

Wild story. More than likely the 2 founders disagreed with waiting to sell to Apple, and in the course of it, discovered some nasty stuff about each other’s behavior in their own company.

Ultimately, Apple always wins. They got one of the founders, and Sandofsky is done for. They’re never going to purchase them now. Why bother, Apple now has one of the founders.

Goes to show again in the history of human actions: be thankful for what you got and don’t be greedy. A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush

Yeah that's not a justification if Apple has acted improperly. Apple are one of the greediest companies around and have a lot of form in this area.

Why would Apple need Halide anyways? Surely they have the knowledge on how to create a more advanced camera app…

Substitute 'Halide' for 'Google' and 'Camera App' for 'AI'

 

[BeatsByTim]

I'm looking at their feature list for Halide and can't figure out what in here is so novel that Apple couldn't implement it. Zebra stripes?

 

[Chester Stone]

Sandfosky is a nasty guy. Filing a lawsuit against a cofounder instead of settling amicably.

Reminiscent of his axe to grind with Austin Allred, where he'd write blog articles decrying the illegitimacy of Lambda School, Bloom, and all of Allred's business pursuits, in pointed language, quoting former students and digging into Lambda's financial records and investments.

The guy just puts too much vitriol into unnecessary muckraking, in the public eye. Like, you'd think Allred hurt the guy in a previous life, or something, but no -- it's just self-righteous accusation after self-righteous accusation, as if Sandofsky is defending humanity against the undisputed antichrist Allred.

Wouldn't want to work with the guy,… not sure who would after seeing how he turned on de With. In these cases, between founders, it doesn't matter who was right and who was wrong. Be the better human being and settle things amicably. 🙈

 

[CharlesShaw]

Sounds like a reality tv show, Real CEO's of ...

Pass the spicy chicken wings, please.

 

[BeatsByTim]

Wish I could read the source article, but no way am I paying money to that site.

 

[iBug2]

The only unique thing Halide seems to offer is that they disable all the crappy post-processing iOS does to your photos. Which raises the question: why doesn't Apple just let us disable it? Why would they want to purchase a company that leverages their own APIs? Apple could make their app basically useless with a single toggle.

Disabling the stock camera post processing should be trivial for Apple, like you said. But adding shutter speed and exposure controls is also piece of cake.

 

[macfacts]

It seemed a bit odd how de With left right as the giant update was about to come out, and was with Apple shortly thereafter. But people come and go.

"stealing" a worker is cheaper than buying the whole company.

 

[vanishing]

Well if Apples current software quality is anything to go by then they were just coasting along and too arrogant to think anything ever needed improving.

They probably wanted Halide as skin to put over their own crappy camera - make it look glitzy & shiny for the influencer & youtube gen customers.