Apple today announced that Bertrand Serlet, senior vice president of Mac Software Engineering, will be departing the company in order to "focus less on products and more on science", although his specific destination remains unknown. Serlet joined Steve Jobs at NeXT in 1989, and transitioned to Apple in 1997 when NeXT was acquired and Jobs brought back to lead Apple.
"I've worked with Steve for 22 years and have had an incredible time developing products at both NeXT and Apple, but at this point, I want to focus less on products and more on science," said Bertrand Serlet, Apple's senior vice president of Software Engineering.
Craig Federighi demoing Mac OS X Snow Leopard (Reuters)
Serlet will be replaced by Craig Federighi, currently Apple's vice president of Mac Software Engineering and who has led Mac OS X engineering for the past two years. Federighi is another former NeXT and Apple employee who spent ten years at Ariba before returning to Apple in 2009. Serlet notes that the transition should be seamless given Federighi's role in leading the current Mac OS X team.
"Craig has done a great job managing the Mac OS team for the past two years, Lion is a great release and the transition should be seamless."
Serlet has occasionally appeared at Apple keynote and media events over the years to introduce Mac OS X-related features, and thus well known to longtime Apple followers. Federighi has made a couple of on-stage appearances since his return to Apple, demoing Mac OS X Snow Leopard at WWDC 2009 and showing off some of the features of Apple's forthcoming Mac OS X Lion at last October's "Back to the Mac" event.
Tuesday October 1, 2024 2:09 pm PDT by Joe Rossignol
Apple is working on a new iPad mini that will "potentially" be released "by the end of 2024," according to a report today from Bloomberg's Mark Gurman. Last month, Gurman reported that Apple had "new iPads in the works," including an upgraded version of the iPad mini. At the time, he said the device was "on deck for Apple's October event" alongside the first M4 Macs. The wording in his...
Tuesday October 1, 2024 5:47 am PDT by Tim Hardwick
Despite being released over two years ago, Apple's AirPods Pro 2 continue to dominate the wireless earbud market. However, with the AirPods Pro 3 expected to launch sometime in 2025, anyone thinking of buying Apple's premium earbuds may be wondering if the next generation is worth holding out for. Apart from their audio and noise-canceling performance, which are generally regarded as...
Tuesday October 1, 2024 1:57 pm PDT by Joe Rossignol
Apple plans to release new MacBook Pro, iMac, and Mac mini models with the M4 series of chips "this year," according to Bloomberg's Mark Gurman. Gurman initially said these Macs would likely be announced during a virtual event this October, but he has been more vague about the timing lately, with wording such as "in the coming weeks" and now merely "this year." In any case, it is clear that...
Friday September 27, 2024 6:14 am PDT by Tim Hardwick
Apple is set to release iOS 18.1 in October, bringing the first set of Apple Intelligence features to iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 16 models. This update marks a significant step forward in Apple's AI integration, offering a new Siri contextually-aware experience and a range of additional capabilities powered by on-device machine learning and large language models. There are a couple of handy new...
Tuesday October 1, 2024 3:14 am PDT by Tim Hardwick
Apple's budget-friendly iPhone SE is set for a major overhaul with a fourth generation model expected to launch in spring 2025. The upcoming model will mark a significant departure from its predecessors, adopting several features from higher-end iPhones while maintaining its position as the most affordable new model in Apple's lineup. According to recent reports, the iPhone SE 4 will sport a ...
Tuesday October 1, 2024 12:38 pm PDT by Joe Rossignol
Apple plans to release a new iPhone SE with Apple Intelligence support, new iPad Air models, and an updated Magic Keyboard for the iPad Air at some point "early next year," according to a report today from Bloomberg's Mark Gurman. The next iPhone SE will have a similar design as the iPhone 14, including an edge-to-edge screen with a notch, according to Gurman. This means the device will...
Friday September 27, 2024 11:47 am PDT by Joe Rossignol
Apple will likely hold another event in October this year to announce new Macs and iPads. If so, it would be the fourth time in the last five years that Apple has held an event in October. Last year, Apple held a virtual event on Monday, October 30 to announce new MacBook Pro and iMac models with the M3 series of chips. Subscribe to the MacRumors YouTube channel for more videos. Below, we...
Wednesday October 2, 2024 5:50 am PDT by Joe Rossignol
Following the release of iOS 18 for the iPhone last month, Apple is preparing to release iOS 18.0.1 with bug fixes in the near future. We previously reported that Apple has been internally testing iOS 18.0.1, and today a private account on X with a proven track record of sharing iOS-related information said the update will have a build number of 22A3370. We expect iOS 18.0.1 to be a minor ...
To me Serlet has more knowledge than Craig. He actually includes information about under the hood stuff and the nice new UI features. Craig just says "beautiful" "very natural". I will remember Serlet as the father of Leopard -- Apple's best release IMO and Craig with Lion, a release that really has nothing that exiting. Again just my opinion.
I KNEW something was going on with Apple with regards to Bertrand.
All the amazing benefits both with speed, less HDD space usage on a clean install, OSX in general (Darwin) and even server or core shells we owe to Bertrand Serlet; not this dingle berry kiss-arse.
I worry that OSX will go complete IOS with a larger screen & storage.
Bertrand Serlet ... you will be solely missed and I HOPE you still get to fiddle with Darwin in each open source iteration.
Now if this guy is not leaving to retire. Then RIP Apple. Seriously, if Apple thinks I want my computer to resemble an overgrown iPad then they can loose my money and I'll be buying an Alienware. Microsoft seem to be the only ones that still get computers? Apple has done brilliantly as well but I really do worry that they have an itch to dumb them down to ridiculous levels!!
Then again...... perhaps the man is leaving because he just is not comfortable with the talk from other employee's about where they want to take Apple after Mr Jobs leaves which is no doubt going to be very soon. I have a feeling they want to go in an entirely new direction..
IMO you don't leave a massively successful company after 22 years without a reason unless your retiring.
Dang, Federighi has large shoes to fill. His Lion demo was so-so. Serlet has been on the Mac OS X team since day one if I remember right, and has always seemed to understand where it needed to go next.
I wonder if the departure has anything to do with Mac OS X transitioning away from a traditional desktop OS towards a more touch-centric, "no-fuss" one. Would be interested in Serlet's opinion on this.
