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Tech, Design, and Leadership - perfect news story for me!

It’s interesting when three domains of my interest coincide. Last week (or was it the week before?) it was the tech/leadership/design news that (now former) Apple Human Interface Design chief, Alan Dye, was leaving Apple for Meta. I drafted this post when the news was announced, but I forgot to post it… so here it is.

My first thought was not about Dye’s competence as a designer (those more competent to judge than I suggest it was limited), but rather the strange move from the perspective of Leadership.

One of the things you learn if you want to succeed as a leader is how to adapt your leadership to the organisation in which you’re leading. Or to leave and find an organisation more aligned with your values and principles. If Dye has done the latter, it is remarkable that he spent so long at Apple. While both Apple and Meta are corporate behemoths, they do seem fundamentally different when it comes to the expression of specific values. If Meta is Dye’s ‘value home’, then Apple certainly cannot have been. If Apple is Dye’s ‘value home’, then Meta is going to be hard for him. Time will tell, I suppose.

For more on the story (if you somehow missed it), John Gruber has a nice write-up on how this news was received at Apple: daringfireball.net/2025/12/b…

Stage Manager doesn't suck - it helps me focus despite its challenges (or perhaps because of them!)

I didn’t like Stage Manager when it debuted. But in Tahoe, I’ve switched to using it. It makes me much more intentional and focused. It still has the problem that if I do need to use two or more apps side-by-side, the interface to bring them together is clunky… and there appears to be no interface at all for separating them again outside of closing the apps and starting over (please tell me if I’ve missed something). But I like the fact that I have a single app on screen; that I can see my beautiful wallpaper around it; and I’m totally zoomed in on what I’m doing in that app without any distraction.