Meta just stole two of Apple's biggest lead designers, and the implications for VR, smart glasses, and AI are absolutely enormous

What you need to know

• Two legendary designers from Apple are headed to Meta's Reality Labs division to design the next generation of wearable devices, including VR and smart glasses.
• Alan Dye has served as the head of Apple's user interface team since 2015. He will now head design for hardware, software, and AI integration for Meta.
• Billy Sorrentino has been responsible for Apple's Vision OS design, Liquid Glass, the iPhone camera, and more at Apple since 2016 and will also be joining the lead design team at Meta.

Meta's Reality Labs products are about to get a lot more streamlined, if a duo of new hires are anything to judge the future by. Alan Dye and Billy Sorrentino have both departed Apple's lead design teams after a decade of service at the company, now moving "to help build the future of computing at the intersection of AI, wearables and spatial computing," according to a social media post by Meta CTO Andrew Bosworth.

Alan Dye's name was first leaked by Bloomberg earlier today, then confirmed by Bosworth a few hours later. Dye comes from a solid decade of design work at Apple, including overseeing the Vision OS user interface design, big redesigns of several of Apple's operating systems, as well as playing "a central role" in many of Apple's apps, the Apple Watch, and the iPhone X.

Enjoy our content? Make sure to set Android Central as a preferred source in Google Search, and find out why you should so that you can stay up-to-date on the latest news, reviews, features, and more.

Dye will begin work as Chief Design Officer for Meta's Reality Labs division, starting December 31, where his major focus will be "revamping Meta's consumer devices with artitificial intelligence features," according to Bloomberg.

Meanwhile, Billy Sorrentino is also joining Meta's Reality Labs division and comes from an enviable position at Apple where he lead design on "VisionOS, this year’s ecosystem-wide Liquid Glass redesign, iPhone camera, computational photography, and Visual Intelligence experiences," according to his LinkedIn profile.

Sorrentino has won many design awards over the past decade at Apple, and his work on VisionOS will no doubt be used to influence sweeping design changes for Meta's Horizon OS, which powers its Meta Quest headsets and future 3rd party VR headsets.

Meta has long struggled to design interfaces for its VR headsets and smart glasses, often launching complete UI overhauls and redesigns every few months in an effort to find something better. The company's newest UI, called Navigator, is still in beta and has seen several major redesigns since initially being introduced in a public test firmware earlier this summer.

Since both Dye and Sorrentino were part of VisionOS's lead design team, there's little doubt that Meta will utilize their talent to help create better UI's for its products, potentially as early as the launch of Meta's upcoming minimalist headset, expected later in 2026.