According to PYMNTS.com, Meta has hired Apple’s Design Studio Lead, Alan Dye, who joined Apple in 2006 and took the top design role in 2015, to head a new internal creative studio. The announcement was made by CEO Mark Zuckerberg in a series of posts on Wednesday, stating the studio will “define the next generation of our products and services.” The studio will also include another Apple design lead, Billy Sorentino, and will incorporate Meta’s existing industrial design and metaverse art teams. Zuckerberg specifically cited “AI glasses and other devices” as the focus, aiming to make interactions “thoughtful, intuitive and built to serve people.” Apple is reportedly replacing Dye with veteran designer Stephen Lemay, who has been with the company since 1999.
Meta Goes All-In on Apple-Style Design
This isn’t just a hire. It’s a declaration of war on Apple’s core competency: integrated hardware and software design. Alan Dye didn’t just work at Apple; he “shaped the evolution” of every major OS and introduced design languages like the new “Liquid Glass” used in Vision Pro and beyond. Meta isn’t just buying one person’s talent. They’re buying nearly two decades of institutional knowledge on how to make technology feel inevitable and, as Zuckerberg keeps saying, “natural.” The real tell is who else is coming: Billy Sorentino. This is a targeted raid on Apple’s design brain trust. Meta’s hardware efforts, from Ray-Ban Stories to Quest, have often felt functional but not *iconic*. Now they’re going for the icon.
The AI Glasses Battle Is a Design Battle
Here’s the thing: Zuckerberg’s repeated focus on “AI glasses” gives the game away. The hardware for smart glasses is getting smaller and more powerful, but the real hurdle is the interface. How do you interact with an AI assistant floating in your field of vision without looking like a crazy person talking to the air? That’s a design problem, not just an engineering one. It requires intuitive, subtle, and probably entirely new interaction patterns. Who better to figure that out than someone who helped define how billions navigate touchscreens? Meta is betting that the next platform shift—from phones to glasses—will be won by whoever makes the tech disappear, not just by who has the best specs. This studio is their weapon to do exactly that.
Can You Replicate Apple’s Magic?
So, big question: can you transplant Apple’s design ethos into Meta’s culture? Apple’s design process is legendary for its secrecy, obsessive iteration, and top-down authority. Meta is… not that. It’s a company built on rapid iteration, A/B testing, and software-centric thinking. Bringing in a superstar designer to lead a “creative studio” sounds great, but will they have the same absolute authority over the final product? Or will they be another voice in a committee? The inclusion of Meta’s existing Reality Labs and industrial design teams under this new studio suggests Zuckerberg wants a unified vision. But creating it is one thing. Shipping it in the face of competing product roadmaps and financial pressures is another. This is a long-term, expensive bet that design, not just AI models, will be the ultimate moat. It’s a bet Apple has always won. Now, Meta is trying to use Apple’s own generals to turn the tables.
