Longtime OS X Chief Bertrand Serlet Working on New Cloud Startup

Back in March 2011, Apple announced that senior vice president of Mac Software Engineering Bertrand Serlet was leaving the company after over 20 years working with Steve Jobs at NeXT and Apple. Serlet and Apple were quiet about his future plans at the time, noting only that he wished to "focus less on products and more on science".

Business Insider now reports that Serlet has been working on a stealth Palo Alto-based startup known as Upthere.

The startup is still in stealth mode, so information about it is scarce, but we've uncovered a few details about the company through job postings, trademark requests, domain name registrations and tweets from employees.

The earliest reference to the company online dates back to April of last year, right after Serlet left Apple, when Upthere, Inc was granted the trademark for "Upthere." In that initial trademark request, the startup is described as being a "cloud hosting provider" which offers "consulting services in the field of cloud computing."

Job postings for design engineers started popping up towards the end of 2011, by which point the company described itself as being an early stage startup looking to build a cloud storage feature, with seven employees on staff.

Additional digging by Business Insider revealed evidence in job postings and a Tweet that Serlet and former Apple and Oracle executive Roger Bodamer are involved with Upthere.

Serlet is known as one of the key figures behind the development of Mac OS X, and he made several appearances on stage during Apple keynotes, perhaps most notably at Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference in 2006 where he famously compared Windows Vista to Mac OS X Tiger in his "Redmond, start your photocopiers" presentation.

Top Rated Comments

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daneoni

90 months ago

Brilliant man and he was hilarious too during keynotes. Wish him the best.

Rating: 18 Votes

Loyalty4Life

90 months ago

This video is what lured me into being an Apple freak. Bertrand was so funny with this presentation. It's still an epic video. Please take the time to watch it. Just don't watch his glass eye too closely. Might creep you out. :apple::apple::apple:

Rating: 9 Votes

kps

90 months ago

I wonder whether it's coincidence that the dumbing-down and closing of OS X began at the same time as he left Apple.

Rating: 7 Votes

RoboCop001

90 months ago

I'm going to start a cloud computing company that uses other universes to store the data.

I'll call it Over There :D

Rating: 6 Votes

Caliber26

90 months ago

I could listen to him say "Safari" ALL DAY LONG! :)

Rating: 6 Votes

Wild-Bill

90 months ago

Explains a great many things......

He probably thought that iOS integration into Lion was a mistake.
He probably thought getting rid of Spaces was a mistake
And he probably thought that not paying any attention to memory management was a mistake

Rating: 6 Votes

AngerDanger

90 months ago

Reminds me of a retarded Schwarzenegger.

Reminds me of anybody who struggled to become bilingual.

Rating: 5 Votes

The Man

90 months ago

What happened to his eye? Like, I'm not even trying to insult him, I'm just wondering.

I think he has a glass eye, or maybe muscular disease or damage to it. I see many places people making fun of his stare, like on The Verge. Quite sad that people (kids?) still do that sort of thing. My father had a damaged eye, and that one did look different because of it.

Rating: 4 Votes