> The rest of the executives were fully content with this effort, and in the end he wasn't even forced out

Tim Cook, by all accounts, can be very micromanaging and demanding when it comes to logistics underlings, but has been extremely hands-off with all his other underlings, doesn't insert himself into their loops or require his approval, doesn't decide by decree like Jobs which forces underlings to fight the bureaucracy on their own, leaves them to resolve conflicts among themselves on their own. He treats Apple like a machine or system where his role is to keep things running smoothly.

It's not "the rest of the executives", that's how Cook's Apple is run. Reportedly.

I agree that it’s a mark of shame that he left voluntarily, but I do think a lot of this traces back to Apple being more of a hardware company at heart. Jony Ive pulled off some industrial design which looked really nice and I think his history there meant that when he promoted the packaging designer to be in charge of UI people gave it too much credence, forgetting that Jony Ive also wasn’t experienced in that area and, as the history of UX botches shows, was about as good at it as a software developer would be at winging hardware design. People who’ve been successful at one thing just aren’t guaranteed to be successful somewhere else and loyalty to the company shouldn’t overshadow that.

Sort of in agreement here.

In-between not paying attention to general software quality and not voicing concern, Craig Federigi should not get a free pass.

In-between kissing the boots of Kings, and dining with Murderers, and posting AI slop on Twitter, Tim Cook ought to have been more involved.

There is enough blame to pass around at Apple today among the leadership, but the specific shitty UI buck stops with Dye. Dye is putting his signature on it and is the face of the Liquid Glass demo, if he wants the primary fame, he can have the primary blame.

Yes, there is: Lemay, who replaced him, is a career UI guy.

Regardless of whether the C-suite recognized the problem or made a conscious decision to replace Dye with Lemay, it is likely that this outcome will, indeed, result in improved UI.