Edible Apple

When ever a high profile executive plans to leave a company, it’s natural for some to look for underlying dissent and chaos lingering the surface. The recent announcement that Bertrand Serlet, Apple’s top man in charge of software engineering, would be leaving the company expectedly sparked similar fears. But Serlet’s departure is nothing more than a simple passing of the torch after a 20+ year career working closely with Steve Jobs.

John Paczkowski writes for All Things D:

There’s a reason Craig Federighi, who is to take over Serlet’s role, handled demo duties for Apple’s Lion preview demo last year (see video below). And there’s a reason Serlet has been selling off Apple shares recently. They’ve been preparing for this day, which sources tell me is not at all the result of a spat over differences in strategic direction or the diminishment of OS X’s importance to Apple.

“There’s no acrimony there,” one source close to the company told me. “Bertrand’s just decided it’s his time to move on. Avie (Tevanian, former senior vice president of software engineering) handed off to him and now he’s handing off to Craig. It’s just a changing of the guard.”

Back to business as usual.