He did, along with a lot of earlier decisions. The underlying problem is that neither he nor Jony Ive had experience doing user interface design—Ive was a hardware designer, and Dye was the packaging guy—so they kept making things which looked good in demos and the screenshots on boxes, but aren’t usable and flagrantly violated Apple own Human Interface Guidelines in ways which weren’t just “we tried to do something innovative” but more like “I never knew this concept in someone else’s field existed”.

There’s a bit more here but I think this opens the possibility of actual UX professionals fixing decisions without the problem of having to avoid saying their boss made a mistake.

https://sixcolors.com/post/2025/12/in-a-major-coup-for-someo...

https://daringfireball.net/2025/12/bad_dye_job

I would worry if I worked at Facebook since their VR work is likely to get the same “looked awesome in the demo” demands which will push the hardware budget and lower usability.