For nearly two decades, Alan Dye helped Apple dominate user design, beginning with the only popular implementation of wearable tech, the Apple Watch, and ending with the controversial Liquid Glass interface. He just joined Meta Reality Labs to steer its foray into devices. If anyone can make smart glasses happen, it’s him.
What’s been the hardest part of your career so far?
Leaving Apple, after nearly 20 years. The team I built, the work we made together… it was more than a job. I gave it everything, but I knew I still had a chapter to write and new things to learn. Walking away from something you love because you know you need to grow is the hardest kind of courage. But the best things I’ve ever done came from jumping, not standing still.
What’s something people get wrong about you?
That I’m a tech guy. I’m a design guy who happens to work in tech. Before I went to Apple, I spent years working with Kate and Andy Spade on their brands, illustrating for the New York Times, and making editorial work for magazines. Design and fashion came first. Technology just became a new and interesting canvas for me.
What do you want to see more of in your industry? Less of?
More taste. Less consensus. The best work I’ve ever been part of was made by small groups of people with strong opinions and the courage to ship them. The worst was made by committees who optimized the soul out of something beautiful.
What’s one work of art that got you through an important moment in your life?
Paul Rand’s Thoughts on Design. I read this book while studying art at Syracuse University, and return to it often. Rand believed that good design should be clear, memorable, and contribute beauty and intelligence to everyday life. I knew when I read it this would be my personal mandate for my work.
What are you looking forward to this year?
Building something no one’s seen before. I just started a new studio, and we’re designing the future of intelligent products. Shaping these powerful technologies in ways that empower users and help them live a better day is thrilling. It’s the most exciting moment of change in our industry that I could imagine, and I’m not going to miss it.
Also, Italy in the summer and a pizza at Concettina ai Tre Sante in Naples with Ciro.
What grounds you, and what invigorates you?
My family grounds me. My kids don’t care about my job; they care about whether I’m around, present, and (most importantly) making pizzas. They keep me honest.
What invigorates me is the beginning of things. A blank page, a new team, a problem no one’s solved. That feeling of possibility before the first mark is made—I’m addicted to it.
What do you think is your biggest contribution to culture?
Honestly, I hope it’s something people can’t quite point to, but they can feel. I spent nearly 20 years at Apple, and the work I’m proudest of isn’t any single product. It’s the care in all of them. The way every Apple product responds to your touch, the way graphics animate fluidly between states, the way sounds guide the experience, or haptics alert the user. All the small moments of surprise and delight. None of that is accidental. We obsessed over every one of those details. Not because we needed to, because we wanted to. My biggest contribution was proving that billions of people can feel the difference between something made with care and something that was just shipped. Even if they’d never be able to point to it, describe it, or even use the word “design,” they know.
To read more from the 2026 CULT100 honorees, see the full list here.
in your life?
