Meta Poached Apple’s Top Design Guys to Fix Its Software UI

Meta has made a big move to hire two prominent designers away from rival tech giant Apple, likely putting them to work on designing Meta’s next generation of AI hardware and the software that runs on it. Al

an Dye, formerly Apple’s vice president of Human Interface Design, will join Meta to head up a new design studio within Meta’s Reality Labs. Billy

Sorrentino, a senior director on Apple’s design team (and former WIRED creative director) will also join Meta’s Reality Labs. In a post

on the Meta platform Threads, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said the two would lead the new studio and “bring together design, fashion, and technology to define the next generation of our products and experiences.” In his own Ins

tagram post, Sorrentino confirmed the news. (In response t

o a request for comment from WIRED, a Meta rep pointed toward the Threads posts by Zuckerberg and Meta CTO Andrew Bosworth.) Dye has long b

een a prominent figure in Apple’s design team, leading big pushes like watchOS, the Apple Vision Pro, and the somewhat controversial Liquid Glass redesign of iOS 26, which designers called beautiful but “hard to read.” His switch to Meta t

elegraphs a hunger from the Zuckerberg-run company to re-create Apple’s dominance in interaction design, even if it has also caused some people to joke about what the Liquid Glass guy will do to Meta’s design interface. Anshel Sag, a tech analy

st at Moor Insights & Strategy, says that above anything else, the move telegraphs a move by Meta to fix its often stodgy and unappealing user interface across its platforms. “Meta has always been a

software nightmare,” Sag says. “There’s a lot of inconsiste