There's no need to lose face to the vast majority of their customers, who don't read tech blogs or know who Siracusa is.

They can just boldy advance forwarded in a rearward direction and claim whatever they want about it. They've done it multiple times - every new iPhone and iOS has looked "the best and newest" and made the last one that looked the best and newest look old-hat.

They owned their mistake of removing all ports and function keys from MacBook Pros, so there is a chance. That being said, the UI degradation of macOS has been a slow but persistent march for about a decade now, and I don't imagine it will change now.

I thought the person responsible was already gone...

They might manage to pin it all on Alan Dye, who recently jumped ship to Meta.