'Halide' Co-Founder Sebastiaan de With Joins Apple's Design Team - MacRumorsOpen MenuShow RoundupsShow Forums menuVisit ForumsOpen Sidebar
Skip to Content

'Halide' Co-Founder Sebastiaan de With Joins Apple's Design Team

Sebastiaan de With, co-founder of the popular iPhone camera app Halide, today announced that he has joined the Human Interface Design team at Apple.

Halide iPhones
"So excited to work with the very best team in the world on my favorite products," he said.

This marks a return to Apple for de With, who previously worked on things such as iCloud, MobileMe, and the Find My app. He has also completed design work for other companies, such as Sony, Mozilla, Oracle, HP, and EA, in the past.

de With is a well-known figure in the online Apple and photography communities.

Apple's design team is undergoing many changes. Last year, the company's former software design chief Alan Dye left for Meta, and Apple's hardware engineering chief and leading CEO candidate John Ternus was reportedly tapped to oversee the company's entire hardware and software design teams towards the end of last year.

Over the past several years, some Apple designers have left to work with Jony Ive, the legendary former Apple design chief. Ive left Apple in 2019 to start his own design firm LoveFrom, and he has been working with OpenAI on a new AI device.

In related news, Halide's parent company Lux today launched a public preview of Halide Mark III, the next-generation version of its flagship camera app.

Popular Stories

Apple Event Logo

Apple Working on All-New Operating System

Wednesday July 29, 2026 11:39 am PDT by
Apple is developing an all-new operating system that is essentially a mix of tvOS, watchOS, and iOS, according to Bloomberg's Mark Gurman. In a report this week, he said the operating system will feature a grid of icons, widgets, and apps, along with customizable clock faces. The new software platform is intended for Apple's long-rumored smart home hub. With built-in facial recognition,...
imac video apple feature

Apple Made Its Second-Biggest Acquisition Ever This Year

Wednesday July 29, 2026 12:03 pm PDT by
Apple this year acquired Israeli startup Q.ai for close to $2 billion, according to the Financial Times. That would make this Apple's second-biggest acquisition ever, after it paid $3 billion for the popular headphone maker Beats in 2014. This is also the largest known Apple acquisition since the company purchased Intel's smartphone modem business and patents for $1 billion in 2019. Q.ai...
Dynamic Island iPhone 18 Pro Feature

iPhone 18 Pro: Twelve Changes Coming to Apple's Next Flagship

Thursday July 30, 2026 3:43 am PDT by
We're less than two months out from the launch of Apple's premium next-generation smartphone lineup, and while we're not expecting a dramatic change in terms of functionality, there are still several enhancements rumored to be coming to the iPhone 18 Pro and iPhone 18 Pro Max. One thing worth noting is that Apple is reportedly planning a major change to its iPhone release cycle this year,...

Top Rated Comments

26 weeks ago
Hey this is encouraging news! Great app and great designer who has been publicly and specifically vocal about the issues with Liquid Glass!

I think this is as close as Apple is going to get to publicly admitting they are trying to fix it.
Score: 34 Votes (Like | Disagree)
26 weeks ago

Hey this is encouraging news! Great app and great designer who has been publicly and specifically vocal about the issues with Liquid Glass!

I think this is as close as Apple is going to get to publicly admitting they are trying to fix it.
Also before Liquid Glass came out he wrote that essay on what he imagined the UI would look like and his mockups are 1000x better than the crap Apple put out. I wasn’t expecting the real thing to be that good, mockups are one thing and a real UI is another, but I was so disappointed that the interface was not even close to what he envisioned. Hopefully he gets the chance to realize that vision now.

Hopefully he starts with MacOS which sorely needs it more than any of the other platforms.
Score: 22 Votes (Like | Disagree)
ProbablyDylan Avatar
26 weeks ago
This guy has his work seriously cut out for him. Here's hoping he's in a position where he can somewhat right the ship.
Score: 15 Votes (Like | Disagree)
IceCool Avatar
26 weeks ago
As a designer this makes me very happy.

I believe that Apple sees their design language cracking and is now truly attempting to reign it back in. With Alan Dye gone, Steve Lemay in, and now Sebastiaan de With... I am looking very forward to the future of Apple design.
Score: 14 Votes (Like | Disagree)
Eric_WVGG Avatar
26 weeks ago
de With is a brilliant designer, and also a quality thinker and writer.

In this blog post ('https://www.lux.camera/physicality-the-new-age-of-ui/'), he writes about the evolution of Apple UI since Mac OS X Tiger, the Flat Design™ era, and his post-WWDC impressions of (as he put it) "living glass." (spoiler: he was very critical of Ives-era non-obvious-buttons, and saw glass as a necessary new direction)

I think overall his optimism has not panned out, but he exhibits the kind of critical thinking that the actual designers of Liquid Glass were missing.

This is outstanding news for Apple.

[edit] interview with Jon Gruber re: Halide ('https://daringfireball.net/thetalkshow/2023/10/27/ep-387')
Score: 12 Votes (Like | Disagree)
26 weeks ago
I hope we're so back

Will probably take years for the full impact of the departure and arrival to show up, but man I hope care and attention to the HDI comes back
Score: 10 Votes (Like | Disagree)

🔗 Related Apple News & Rumors

Stay updated with the latest Apple ecosystem news and verified rumors