Let's start with some quotes:

• "leaving after years of absolutely abysmal...design"
• "it's not just that [he] is a fraud of a UI designer and leader"
• "[Fruit Company] employees 'giddy' about..departure"
• "I think we're all looking forward to some change ahead"

Apparently Mrs. Lincoln didn't like the play.

Of course, there were alternative views from the other side:

• "Meta poaches [Fruit Company's] design chief"
• "Another blow to [Fruit Company's] design organization"

The above is just some of the Internet Amplification Effect's recent mutterings about Alan-to-Dye-for's announcement that he was leaving as the Fruit Company's head designer in order to become the InstaFace lead designer.

Apparently that change is rattling Silicon Valley into a great deal of sabre movements.

So which is the right view?

Well it seems the Fruit Company employees and fans think this is a good thing and are going to push as hard as possible to get the Dye Job under the bus. I suspect they'll then start the bus and drive it back and forth, too.

As one of those who had a Macintosh development company before the Macintosh was known about or publicly released, one of the things I'd say is this: the days of clear, well thought out, carefully managed user interface design left the buildings in Cupertino some time ago, mostly under Dye's former boss, who also left not too long ago.

If, as many of us hope, this change in management brings us closer to the Good 'Ole UI Guideline Days, I'm all for it. Not only was one of the Fruit Company's advantages that they controlled their entire ecosystem, but the ecosystem itself was nicely trimmed, groomed, and managed.

Ironically, as lead designer Alan left Apple, Tyler Hall published his new Alan.app What does this free app do, you ask? Well, it fixes an interface design problem a lot of people now have on Macs, in that it isn't always clear which window is the active window. All Alan.app does is put a user defined border on the active window.