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Comment by djmips

1 month ago

I am starting to think John Gruber doesn't like Alan Dye.

Where were Gruber’s posts about Dye so obviously being a problem before his exit?

  • His podcast with Louie Mantia in July was pretty clear with it, though it also suggests why he’s given significant criticism of the design direction, but mostly just has quips and shade thrown at Alan Dye on the blog:

    > I get to ask Alan Dye about [the shadows on Apple Watch faces]. And he was like, oh, we render a shadow? And I was like, oh, you never even looked. I just instantly realised he’d never really even looked at it. Like, somebody at Apple has, but Alan Dye didn't. […] It just suddenly came to me, oh, he doesn't do the job I thought he did.

  • Quickly googled his website and found this from January 2021:

    > [...] I’m reminded of all the UI and interaction designs and changes in iOS and MacOS that are just bad. There’s a real sense that Apple’s current HI team, under Alan Dye, is a “design is what it looks like” group, not a “design is how it works” group.

    And this, from June of this year:

    > Re-watching Jobs’s introduction of Aqua for the umpteenth time, I still find it enthralling. I found Alan Dye’s introduction of Liquid Glass to be soporific, if not downright horseshitty.

    He has been even more critical on his podcast. This has been a repeated refrain and increasing over the years. My first reaction, when I read the news, was "Apple bloggers and podcasters will be THRILLED."