The man left prior to Apple facing, and losing, a class action lawsuit over his favored keyboard design. Screens also died left and right in designs approved by him, and his next great innovation would be the Touch Bar.

It was a precipitous fall from grace

Everyone focuses on M1 as supposedly super chip that fixed all the "intel problems" of Macbooks, but similarly large difference was how first M1 series reversed a bunch of Johnny Ive era designs including how forcibly thin it was.

It was a big mistake to leave Jony Ive in charge of design after Steve Jobs left. Jobs had a good design sense that was key to grounding Ive's work.

Ive's vision of Apple as a luxury brand certainly aligned with Cook's focus on profit, and the results of that sadly still echo through the company today.

Leaving him there was an even bigger mistake that Apple allowed and never corrected--Alan Dye had to correct that himself. Any dis post-departure only points the blame back at Apple's management.

So was Dye behind the super-flat butterfly keyboard, too? ;)