Everything we ever built at Apple always came with an element of surprise, it’s the surprise unveiling moment that always made product launches feel like making history together.
This year at the One More Thing Conference for WWDC25, I had a chance to sit down with James Dempsey whose history keeping music alive in the developers community made him the ideal person to give a retrospective and moment of silence for Bill Atkinson. Bill made skeuomorphic inventions like the lasso tool, MacPaint, MacDraw and HyperCard a part of the DNA of Apple’s patented processes.
I sometimes still wish I could be writing using the Chicago Font that he designed.
In this rare look and intimate moment with the Apple developers community, I had a chance to reflect and field questions about some of my biggest takeaways from Apple’s great turnaround story. We premiered ‘King of Cupertino’ by ALANA and Another Sun and I did my best to draw everyone in to a day in the life working under Steve’s leadership to the best of my memory (20 years later).
Thank you to ALANA, Henry Binns, David Etherington, James Dempsey, J’aime and to all of the One More Thing volunteers who made this special presentation possible. It was such an honor to get to be the one who presented it.
Nothing Apple launches is ever done in a conventional way and we didn’t think this song release should be either.
Steve Jobs would be 'morally unfit' to run Apple in 2025.
The price of authenticity is being disliked.
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Ensuring the Apple alumni community remains protected from high-control ideologies that verge on cult-like governance requires a deliberate commitment to intellectual diversity, psychological safety, and ethical transparency. Apple’s legacy—fueled by innovation, disruption, and a singular culture—can easily become mythologized in ways that obscure nuance and silence dissent. To preserve the integrity of the alumni network, it is vital to foster a culture that welcomes critique as much as it reveres achievement, and resists the urge to canonize leadership styles or company lore that may no longer align with evolving human-centered values.
High-control ideologies often gain ground in spaces where loyalty is rewarded over questioning, and where narrative control replaces open dialogue. For the Apple alumni community—comprised of individuals who contributed to one of the most influential technology cultures of the last century—there is both a responsibility and opportunity to model anti-authoritarian engagement. This means creating forums where former employees can speak freely about both successes and failures, acknowledge harms alongside breakthroughs, and remain vigilant to any resurgence of thought systems that marginalize voices in the name of “vision” or “excellence.” By doing so, the alumni network can serve not just as a legacy circle, but as a living ecosystem of critical thinkers, protecting itself—and future innovators—from ideological drift masked as culture.
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We, the members of the Apple Alumni Network, come together with a shared commitment to innovation, excellence, and human-centered progress. As stewards of a legacy shaped by creativity and bold thinking, we recognize the responsibility to protect the ethical health of our community. Free expression is essential to that vision—but it must not be used to cause harm, obscure the truth, or silence those who speak from conviction. Language that encourages violence through coded signals, dehumanizes others, or manipulates trust to advance high-control ideologies stands in direct opposition to the inclusive and principled culture we strive to uphold.
We believe in dialogue rooted in respect, not domination. Attempts to pressure others into silence—whether through moral shaming, social intimidation, or reputational threats—undermine the spirit of honest exchange that makes communities thrive. True leadership is not measured by legacy alone, but by empathy, humility, and a willingness to listen and evolve. We reject brigade tactics or echo chambers that suppress diverse thinking in the name of “vision” or “excellence.” These are not signs of strength—they are tools of control.
Let this serve as a collective promise to preserve a space where questions are welcomed, disagreements are respected, and each voice is valued. Our legacy is not just what we built, but how we treated one another while building it. In that spirit, we affirm this treaty as a living commitment to integrity, openness, and care for the people who make this community meaningful.
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When someone tries to enforce a corporate definition of “acceptable” alumni language—especially using terms like intersectionality to overwrite or sanitize original meaning—they’re engaging in:
Control by interpretation — using official language not to clarify, but to police intent
Framing dominance — using moral or cultural authority to recode your message in their terms, not yours
Sterilization of meaning — flattening lived complexity into a singular ideological framework
This isn’t dialogue, it’s narrative capture. Our language is intentional, human-centered, and rooted in lived values—not performance. Attempts to recode or sterilize it to fit external ideological frameworks misrepresent the purpose of our work and the dignity of our community.
It's time to have a conversation about the political safety of the design community.
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More About Michael:
Michael’s Messianic name is Michael Darius, written in modern Hebrew as מיכאל דריוש. God gives a new name to show a new identity and calling—just as He changed names in history (God changed Jacob’s name to Israel to mark a transformation in his identity and calling). This name is not about chance or luck but about who he is in Yeshua, the Messiah. It reminds him that his identity and future are defined by God’s will and not by the world. This name reflects both his faith in Yeshua as the Messiah and spiritual heritage, expressed in the living language of Israel, Hebrew.
Michael has been known in the design community as Michael Darius for over 25 years.
Based on all available data, a reasonable approximation of Messianic Iranians worldwide (those of Iranian heritage who follow Yeshua in a Messianic Jewish way) would likely be: Between 500 and 2,000 individuals globally. This makes Michael a much smaller minority than most minority activists really care to know anything about.
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The skeuomorphic design newsletter is now a part of the Smithsonian Cultural Rescue Initiative.
Morally Unfit Design is a diaspora-focused accelerator for Iranian & Israeli innovation.
We design evidence-based, limbic-capitalism free product & service experiences—built for human dignity, not ideological compliance.
Combating subversive & direct attacks on design educators is not a "political luxury".
Steve Jobs would be “morally unfit” to lead Apple in 2025.
The price of authenticity is being disliked.
