Somehow when Ive left, Dye got put in charge of design even though he had zero experience in software design that anyone seems to be aware of. He was criticized for the years following for a lot of bizarre design regressions that were happening across all of Apple's OSes. Then a few months after Dye himself announced Liquid Glass at WWDC last year, he blindsided Apple by accepting a poaching offer from Meta, seemingly because Zuck isn't aware of how untalented the guy is.
Now Stephen Lemay is in charge, who's been at Apple for many years and actually knows stuff about software design. It's said that within the walls of Apple, a lot of people were very happy about the change, and the first showing of design changes we got since then are looking very good for Apple.
Maybe Zuck just wanted his laptop to get better.
And who was Dye's second in command, and who was integral in coming up with Liquid Glass, designing it, and forcing it down everyone's throat.
We all disliked Dye before he left. People were taking potshots at Apple's design direction under him for 10 years.
When you’re using a tool for 40 years and someone who really has no clue gets in charge, starts breaking basic functionality for no good reason and affecting your day to day work, it’s not hard to get infuriated.
If I were at Apple's leadership I'd consider that a major blindspot and focus deeply on fixing it.
- He wasn't the only one pushing it? Lemay was described in Bloomberg as one of the key people behind Liquid Glass
- The vision wasn't as bad as it turned out to be, but it was rushed because of yearly releases and Apple having nothing to present?
- None of the senior leadership use the devices beyond occasionally, so they couldn't care less what's happening to the UX?
On your second, Liquid Glass is merely the culmination of years of bad direction. Hiding essential feature on hover (notification's close icon, elapsed time on Apple Music, proxy icon, etc), poor contrast, legibility, background/foreground differentiation, was a long running process.
On your third point, I think it's possible and, if that's the case, deeply troubling.
The mess he actively implemented and was an integral part of?
Why do people keep thinking that Alan Dye was the only person (apparently with God-like powers) who somehow forced and designed Liquid Glass alone, in isolation, and somehow sneaked it in to every Apple platform.
Such is the world of Apple fans.