Bertrand Serlet, Apple’s senior vice president of Mac Software Engineering, who led its desktop operating system team since 1997, will leave the company.
“I want to focus less on products and more on science,” said Serlet in a statement on Wednesday.
Serlet has been a direct report of Steve Jobs for the past 22 years at both Apple and NeXT -- the company Jobs established after he was ousted from Apple in the 1980s.
Serlet was responsible for the launches of MacOS X Tiger, Leopard and Snow Leopard.
Craig Federighi, Apple’s vice president of Mac Software Engineering, will replace Serlet, according to Apple.