Apple’s plans to reinforce the iPhone 18 Professional‘s Digital camera app led it to think about buying Halide, however the talks in the end collapsed and had been adopted by a fierce authorized dispute between the startup’s co-founders, in line with The Info stories.
In the summertime of 2025, Apple reportedly held discussions to amass Lux Optics, the developer behind the favored iPhone digicam apps Halide, Kino, and Spectre. The corporate concluded that it might get a greater supply from Apple sooner or later following updates to the app. Two months after the talks concluded with no deal, Apple set about recruiting Lux’s co-founder and designer Sebastian de With.
Lux CEO and co-founder Ben Sandofsky is alleged to have fired de With in December over monetary misconduct. de With introduced that he had joined Apple’s design group in January.
Sandofsky has now filed a lawsuit within the California Superior Courtroom of Santa Cruz towards de With, accusing him of improperly utilizing greater than $150,000 in Lux firm funds to pay for private bills since 2022, in addition to offering confidential materials and supply code from Lux to Apple.
Through the discussions to amass Lux, Apple workers purportedly instructed the startup that its mental property was a significant consideration in evaluating the corporate. Apple apparently wished to amass Lux to bolster the built-in Digital camera app, which is alleged to be “high precedence for the corporate proper now.” The iPhone 18 Professional will “match professional-grade cameras by way of sure superior options,” necessitating an improve of the built-in Digital camera app. Apple isn’t named as a defendant within the case and it’s not accused of any wrongdoing.
de With’s authorized representatives say that the lawsuit is meritless and deny that he “used, transferred, or disclosed any Lux mental property” as a part of his new job at Apple. They added that the lawsuit was solely filed after de With raised considerations with Sandofsky about monetary irregularities at Lux and had requested entry to its monetary information and funds, suggesting that it was a “retaliatory response to these efforts and an try and keep away from scrutiny of that conduct.”
