upthere logoBack 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

daneoni Avatar
167 months ago
Brilliant man and he was hilarious too during keynotes. Wish him the best.
Score: 18 Votes (Like | Disagree)
Loyalty4Life Avatar
167 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:
Score: 9 Votes (Like | Disagree)
kps Avatar
167 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.
Score: 7 Votes (Like | Disagree)
Wild-Bill Avatar
167 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
Score: 6 Votes (Like | Disagree)
Caliber26 Avatar
167 months ago
I could listen to him say "Safari" ALL DAY LONG! :)
Score: 6 Votes (Like | Disagree)
RoboCop001 Avatar
167 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
Score: 6 Votes (Like | Disagree)

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