★ Squashing:

The Alan Dye leaving for Meta thing, that was unexpected, and, to some degree, turbulent. But I have yet to speak to a single person within Apple, nor a single UI designer outside Apple, who thinks it’s anything but good news for Apple that Dye jumped ship for Meta. Not just that Dye is a fraud of a UI designer. Not just that he and his inner circle have vandalized MacOS, the crown jewel of human-computer interaction. Not just that he and his team are given — or have taken — credit for innovative, high-quality work on VisionOS that really belongs to the interaction team Mike Rockwell put together for VisionOS. Not just that Dye left Apple for a rival company, period — something unheard of amongst Apple’s bleed-in-six-colors executive ranks. But that he left for Meta, of all fucking companies? That’s the proof that Dye (and his urban cowboy magazine-designer cohort) never belonged at Apple in the first place.

Ouch.

It’s uncertain whether Apple will keep Liquid Glass unchanged in iOS 27, and it’s premature to conclude. The latest iOS 27 build reportedly doesn’t update Liquid Glass, so no definitive judgment should be made. If iOS 27 is a Snow Leopard release, significant UI changes are unlikely. Gurman should be better than that.

A few notes about the MacBook Neo:

I’m not thrilled by the lack of backlighting in the keyboard. Maybe it’ll appear in the pricier model in a future iteration. The keys are white/tinted, so maybe the printing is contrasty enough to make the key symbols visible even in poor light. I was willing to put this in the ‘okay’ category, but I can’t help feeling this was an unnecessary corner for Apple to cut.

My wife also has some negative comments about the keyboard. Not only it doesn’t include backlighting, since the keycaps aren’t pure white, the contrast is lower which negatively affect the readability in low light conditions.

At the Apple Store for testing the Neo. Two things: I prefer its trackpad over my MacBook Air’s. The speaker grill can easily be bended with a nail. Much faster than I thought. Nice feel in the hands. Great size. Impressed. Bought one for my wife.

It will be interesting to see in the next 2 or 3 quarters the effect of the MacBook Neo on the Mac sales (harder to tell as low priced Mac won’t make a big difference in revenue numbers) and the IPad sales. If both move in opposite directions then we could potentially conclude on the Neo effect.