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John Gruber Shares Scathing Commentary About Apple's Departing Software Design Chief
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For whom? His friends in the Apple pundit/blogger/podcast sphere so it gives them content for their shows? I can believe this guy wasn’t the right person to lead user interface design at Apple. But rather than taking personal swipes at him shouldn’t the focus be on why he was allowed to stay in that job for 6+ years? Who did he report to? Craig Federighi?
Gruber is offering unwavering support of the changes at Apple. He isn't being mean, he's being honest. John definitely wanted to publish this opinion on his site for awhile imo.... but just never got around to doing it for whatever reason.
With these changes, I feel confident Apple's best days are ahead of us.
It almost sounds like you can both praise something and be critical about it at the same time. Now, we all know this is completely impossible, you can really only either hate something in a snarky, cynical way or be an idiot. But imagine if you could, I don’t know, like something overall because of its foundations and not overreact over every icon change, but still be generally critical of certain trends. If only that was possible. One can dream.
The SVP of operations of was head of the design team since Jony Ive left and they now report to Tim Cook since Jeff Williams has retired. It's an operations-led company, make no mistake.
I hate my Mac every time I want to go for my curated app folders and they are no longer there.
Someone unilaterally decided I would be happier to have to remember the exact name of every app and use a freaking search window or scroll through an endless screen for apps or ask yet again for Siri to uselessly try and help me.
And every time I sign in that stupid App Library is there in my face so I both have to hate it and hate it a second and third time as I have to dismiss it and it’s disembodied search window immediately following.
So what. Like I said, he hasn’t been at the company for 6 years. I don’t know who he was reporting to but if he was not qualified for the job then they should have let him go or moved him into another role.
Yes, I think Gruber’s piece would have been better if it focused more on this. If Dye should never have been hired in that role why did it take 6 years to replace him? And if he hadn’t been poached by Meta would he still be in that role right now?
Right, but Tim Cook and Jeff Williams aren’t designing products. They delegate that to the product focused people in the company.
What pisses me off is not the designs themselves but the propensity for them to change all the time. 99% of what I do I don't give a **** if it looks like NEXTstep still. What I don't want to do is have to un**** my brain every 3 years due to vanity polish over everything.
Anyway good news. The worst are gone: Dye, Ive.
Maybe we'll even get a good mouse out of this one day.
Anyway good news. The worst are gone: Dye, Ive.
Maybe we'll even get a good mouse out of this one day.
Sure. Name the others, though, and let me know which ones are big enough to matter.
Yet in his piece he basically admits Dye left on his on accord. There is nothing in his piece that suggests Apple was getting ready to let this guy go or move him elsewhere in the company.
It shows that leadership doesn’t have much of a clue about good interaction design. Which shouldn’t be surprising, given the last decade.
I still have not "upgraded" to macOS 26 or iOS 26 for fear of Liquid Glass. Wake me when the nightmare is over... 😴
I’m not arguing about the opinion itself, I’m just saying it’s unfair and wrong to say “these people praised Liquid Glass but will now criticise it”.
It makes no sense to me why he wasn’t reporting into Craig Federighi’s org. Heck this is what Craig’s bio says on Apple’s leadership page:
His teams are responsible for delivering the software at the heart of Apple’s innovative products, including the user interface, applications, and frameworks.
Yes. This is a great example of how Apple may not have the leadership it used to—I suspect we'll see more pieces like the Snell one on Six Colors saying Apple got saved by this, and their blindness to how this was going doesn't speak well of leadership.