On 09 June 2025, Apple unveiled a new user interface for iOS called Liquid Glass at the Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) 2025. The update was announced in June 2025 during Apple’s annual developer conference. It features shiny, reflective, and transparent elements that give iOS a more “glassy” and layered appearance. Apple introduced this design to enhance visual depth and improve the overall user experience. The new interface will be rolled out with the next major iOS update later this year.
Amidst this development, a post (here, here) is going viral on social media, claiming that Apple’s lead designer Jon Yongfook, was fired by the company along with his design team, who had been working on visual elements related to blur and interface design. The post also suggests that Yongfook has announced he is joining Samsung. This news started buzzing after Jon Yongfook (@yongfook) wrote on X: “I was fired by Apple today. Me and my design team have spent the last 18 months tirelessly testing different levels of Gaussian blur on backgrounds when foreground elements are in focus. If you are looking for experts in the blur, glass, liquid, grass, or fur UI space, lmk”. Along with this, he shared screenshots of “projects” he claimed to have worked on at Apple.
Following this post, several media outlets, including Republic TV, NDTV Profit, and News 24, published reports suggesting that Apple had fired the designer and the team behind the new iOS 26 Liquid Glass interface. Let’s verify the claim made in the post through this article.
Claim: Apple’s lead designer, Jon Yongfook, was fired following the unveiling of the new ‘Liquid Glass’ design for iOS 26.
Fact: There is no evidence to support the claim that Apple fired its lead designer following the launch of the new ‘Liquid Glass’ design for iOS 26. Jon Yongfook has no known association with Apple; his social media profiles identify him as the founder of Bannerbear, with no mention of any role at Apple. Apple has not issued any official statement about firing a designer related to this update. The Human Interface Design team at Apple is led by Alan Dye, who introduced the ‘Liquid Glass’ interface at WWDC 2025. Additionally, on 11 June 2025, Jon Yongfook clarified on X that his earlier post was satire. Hence, the claim made in the post is FALSE.
To verify the claim, we looked into Jon Yongfook’s social media profiles and found that his X and LinkedIn accounts do not mention any association with Apple or indicate that he led a design team there. His bio states he is the founder of Bannerbear, a SaaS platform for automated image generation, and a former employee of Aviva. We found no evidence that he has ever worked at Apple, and there are no credible reports or official statements from Apple confirming that it fired a lead designer.
We found that Apple’s Human Interface Design team is led by Alan Dye, the company’s Vice President of Design, who introduced the Liquid Glass design at WWDC 2025. After Jony Ive left Apple in 2019, the design leadership was split into two areas: Software (Human Interface Design) and Hardware (Product Design). Alan Dye, who joined Apple in 2006, has been heading the software and UI design since 2019. The hardware design team was earlier led by Evans Hankey, who took over after Ive but left in early 2023. Since then, the hardware team reports directly to COO Jeff Williams, with design responsibilities shared among senior team members.
During our research, we found an X-post shared by Jon Yongfook (@yongfook) on June 11, 2025, where he clarified that his earlier post was intended as satire. He wrote: “Bless all of you who recognized this as satire. I’ve been enjoying the puns. I’ve been an Apple user for 20+ years, and this is the worst UI I’ve seen. I hope they tweak it. To be perfectly transparent, this is overwhelming my notifications now, so I’m putting the thread on mute.”
To sum up, a satirical post is being shared as real news that Apple fired its lead designer after unveiling the ‘Liquid Glass’ UI.
