Bertrand Serlet of Mac OS X Fame is Leaving Apple

Apple announced in a press release today that Bertrand Serlet, senior vice president of Mac Software Engineering, and one of the lead creators and developers of Mac OS X, is leaving the company. Here’s Serlet on his departure:

“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,”

Taking his place is Craig Federighi, Apple’s current vice president of Mac Software Engineering. Serlet has this to say about his successor:

“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.”

This is obviously pretty major news for the Mac platform, since Mac OS X Lion is due for release this summer. John Gruber of DaringFireball describes Bertrand Serlet as “one of the good guys” and says “It’s hard to overstate how influential he’s been in the creation of the core OS and Cocoa libraries. He’s been building, revising, iterating, and improving this system since 1989.”

Some are taking this as a bad sign for the Mac, including several tech tabloids that I won’t bother linking to who propose all sorts of conspiracy theories and more end-of-the-Mac type scenarios that are equally ridiculous. I don’t buy that idea and neither should you, the Mac will obviously evolve but almost certainly be around for many years to come.

You can read the full press release at Apple.com.