An interesting post from the Secret Diary of Steve Jobs:
Bertrand Serlet recalled to his home planet
Well it’s a sad day for all of us here in Cupertino. Bertrand Serlet, the friendly cyborg from the future who has lived among us and helped guide our software development efforts with such skill, has been recalled back to his home planet. We’ll have a little announcement at town hall this Friday with a cake and ice cream. Bertrand has been instrumental in guiding our OS X development and now that Leopard is out the door Bertrand (real name: Belar) felt this was a good time to heed the call of his people on Gallifrey One, who need him to help fight off some invaders in the future or something.
While the fake Steve Jobs does his usual brilliant job of posting, I wanted to comment on Bertrand Serlet. First off, Bertrand came to Apple when NeXT staged a reverse take over of Apple back in the mid 90s. I had the pleasure of working with Bertrand during my time at NeXT, and I can tell you that he is one of the nicest people you could ever meet. A personable fellow with an easy style, and an amusing accent, he has a sharp sense of humor that often can be subtle and working on multiple levels at the same time.
At NeXT he was responsible for leading up some of the most innovative software that would later go on to form the foundation for OS X at Apple. In recent years he has been in charge of the whole OS over at Apple, so we have him to thank for creating the environment that us Mac users love and enjoy (and that I am using now to post to you).
A huge salute to Bertrand – best of luck wherever you are headed next, I am sure it is going to be very cool.
Update – A video on YouTube showing you some of Bertrand being his wonderful wacky self. Seriously, if anyone out there is making a movie and wants a French mad scientist / inventor, you would be well advised to pattern him on Bertrand.