Bertrand Serlet (; born 1960) is a French

software engineer Software engineering is a branch of both computer science and engineering focused on designing, developing, testing, and maintaining software applications. It involves applying engineering principles and computer programming expertise to develop ...

and businessman; he worked first at the ''Institut national de recherche en informatique et en automatique'' (

INRIA The National Institute for Research in Digital Science and Technology (Inria) () is a French national research institution focusing on computer science and applied mathematics. It was created under the name French Institute for Research in Comp ...

) before leaving France for the United States in 1985. He was the Senior Vice President of Software Engineering at

Apple Inc. Apple Inc. is an American multinational corporation and technology company headquartered in Cupertino, California, in Silicon Valley. It is best known for its consumer electronics, software, and services. Founded in 1976 as Apple Comput ...

Education

Serlet graduated from École normale supérieure Paris-Saclay. He holds a PhD in

Computer Science Computer science is the study of computation, information, and automation. Computer science spans Theoretical computer science, theoretical disciplines (such as algorithms, theory of computation, and information theory) to Applied science, ...

from the Université Paris-Sud 11.

Career

Serlet was the former Senior Vice President of Software Engineering at Apple Inc., where he worked from 1997 to 2011. He succeeded

Avie Tevanian Avadis "Avie" Tevanian (born 1961) is an American software engineer and former senior vice president of software engineering at Apple from 1997 to 2003, before serving as chief software technology officer from 2003 to 2006. There, he redesigned ...

in the position in July 2003. In this position he was primarily responsible for the release of

Mac OS X macOS, previously OS X and originally Mac OS X, is a Unix, Unix-based operating system developed and marketed by Apple Inc., Apple since 2001. It is the current operating system for Apple's Mac (computer), Mac computers. With ...

(including 10.4 Tiger, 10.5 Leopard and 10.6 Snow Leopard). He led development of the Workspace manager in

NeXTSTEP NeXTSTEP is a discontinued object-oriented, multitasking operating system based on the Mach kernel and the UNIX-derived BSD. It was developed by NeXT, founded by Steve Jobs, in the late 1980s and early 1990s and was initially used for its ...

and

OPENSTEP OpenStep is an object-oriented application programming interface (API) specification developed by NeXT. It provides a framework for building graphical user interfaces (GUIs) and developing software applications. OpenStep was designed to be plat ...

. Before joining Apple he worked at

Xerox PARC Future Concepts division (formerly Palo Alto Research Center, PARC and Xerox PARC) is a research and development company in Palo Alto, California. It was founded in 1969 by Jacob E. "Jack" Goldman, chief scientist of Xerox Corporation, as a div ...

and

NeXT NeXT, Inc. (later NeXT Computer, Inc. and NeXT Software, Inc.) was an American technology company headquartered in Redwood City, California that specialized in computer workstations for higher education and business markets, and later develope ...

. In 2001, Serlet and Tevanian initiated a secret project at the request of

Steve Jobs Steven Paul Jobs (February 24, 1955 – October 5, 2011) was an American businessman, inventor, and investor best known for co-founding the technology company Apple Inc. Jobs was also the founder of NeXT and chairman and majority shareholder o ...

, to sell MacOS on

Vaio is a Japanese personal computer manufacturer headquartered in Azumino, Nagano, Azumino, Nagano Prefecture. It is owned by Nojima Corporation. Vaio began as a brand of Sony, introduced in 1996, until it offloaded it into an independent company ...

laptops. Apple demonstrated the product to

Sony is a Japanese multinational conglomerate (company), conglomerate headquartered at Sony City in Minato, Tokyo, Japan. The Sony Group encompasses various businesses, including Sony Corporation (electronics), Sony Semiconductor Solutions (i ...

executives at a golf party in

Hawaii Hawaii ( ; ) is an island U.S. state, state of the United States, in the Pacific Ocean about southwest of the U.S. mainland. One of the two Non-contiguous United States, non-contiguous U.S. states (along with Alaska), it is the only sta ...

, with the most expensive Vaio they could acquire.

refused, arguing

's sales had just started to grow after years of difficulties. Serlet spoke at

WWDC The Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) is an information technology conference held annually by Apple Inc. The conference is currently held at Apple Park in California. The event is used to showcase new software and technologies in the macO ...

2006 on the perceived similarities between Mac OS X Tiger and

Windows Vista Windows Vista is a major release of the Windows NT operating system developed by Microsoft. It was the direct successor to Windows XP, released five years earlier, which was then the longest time span between successive releases of Microsoft W ...

, including comparing Apple's Aqua interface and Microsoft's

Aero Aero is a Greek prefix relating to flight and air. In British English, it is used as an adjective related to flight (e.g., as a shortened substitute for aeroplane). Aero, Ærø, or Aeros may refer to: Aeronautics Airlines and companies * Aero (A ...

interface. He poked fun at the apparent visual similarities and referenced a 2004 WWDC banner that read, "Redmond, start your photocopiers" — a reference to Microsoft headquarters, which is located in

Redmond, Washington Redmond is a city in King County, Washington, United States, located east of Seattle. The population was 73,256 at the 2020 United States census, 2020 census. Redmond is best known as the home of Microsoft and Nintendo of America. The city h ...

. He also spoke at

2009 and gave an in-depth demonstration of

Snow Leopard The snow leopard (''Panthera uncia'') is a species of large cat in the genus ''Panthera'' of the family Felidae. The species is native to the mountain ranges of Central and South Asia. It is listed as Vulnerable on the IUCN Red List because ...

, which included further references to Microsoft's Windows operating system — claiming that

Windows 7 Windows 7 is a major release of the Windows NT operating system developed by Microsoft. It was Software release life cycle#Release to manufacturing (RTM), released to manufacturing on July 22, 2009, and became generally available on October 22, ...

is just another version of their widely criticized

Vista Vista may refer to: Software *Windows Vista, the line of Microsoft Windows client operating systems released in 2006 and 2007 * VistA, (Veterans Health Information Systems and Technology Architecture) a medical records system of the United States ...

release, citing the ongoing use of the

Windows Registry The Windows Registry is a hierarchical database that stores low-level settings for the Microsoft Windows operating system and for applications that opt to use the registry. The kernel, device drivers, services, Security Accounts Manager, a ...

, DLLs, the

User Account Control User Account Control (UAC) is a mandatory access control enforcement feature introduced with Microsoft's Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008 operating systems, with a more relaxed

(UAC) subsystem and existence of an interactive disk defragmenter. On March 23, 2011, Apple announced that Serlet was leaving the company "to focus less on products and more on science." ''Business Insider'' reported Serlet had founded a startup in

cloud computing Cloud computing is "a paradigm for enabling network access to a scalable and elastic pool of shareable physical or virtual resources with self-service provisioning and administration on-demand," according to International Organization for ...

called Upthere along with other former Apple employees. In November, 2012, Upthere raised an undisclosed amount of venture capital funding from Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Elevation Partners, and Google Ventures. Upthere was acquired by Western Digital on August 28, 2017. In July 2012 he joined the board of directors of Parallels, Inc. In 2015, he co-founded data center technology company

Fungible In economics and law, fungibility is the property of something whose individual units are considered fundamentally interchangeable with each other. For example, the fungibility of money means that a $100 bill (note) is considered entirely equ ...

with former

Juniper Networks Juniper Networks, Inc. is an American multinational corporation headquartered in Sunnyvale, California. The company develops and markets networking products, including Router (computing), routers, Network switch, switches, network management so ...

' CEO Pradeep Sindhu. In an interview with INRIA, he shared details about Grokable, a small stealth startup he is working on. According to Serlet, Grokable is "a purely scientific and highly innovative project that involves imitating animal intelligence."

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Serlet, Bertrand 1961 births Living people Apple Inc. employees Apple Inc. executives Paris-Sud University alumni Scientists at PARC (company)