This article says that “Avie Tevanian Named Chief Software Technology Officer of Apple” and that “Bertrand Serlet Promoted to Senior Vice President of Software Engineering”. Does this mean anything to anyone who might be slightly in the know? Fewer stripes? Less bloat? Less eye candy?

Is this a demotion of Avie? The article states "This is something I've wanted to do for some time," said Avie Tevanian, Apple's newly appointed chief software technology officer. "I'm incredibly proud of the products the software engineering team has delivered over the past few years, and I am 100% confident that their success will continue under Bertrand's leadership."

And…

In his new role, Tevanian will focus on setting company-wide software technology directions, and Serlet will now report directly to Apple CEO Steve Jobs and lead the company's OS Software Engineering group.

Change that to “Serlet will now report directly to thalo” and I’d have more confidence.

Nice!!! Does anyone know Serlet's background? eg: is he a HIG supporter or just another NeXTie ?

What a great article at Daring Fireball on Avie Tevanian. Always hated the guy. Always will.

Link.

Oh my god, the part about the missing Technote is a scream. He made an anti-9 rant, and got squelched by Apple after the Mac Faithful programmers complained. Perfect.

But this article is a sordid tale of a geek aristocrat out to wipe out the legacy and put NeXT in its place. Something we all knew, suspected, or felt. What I didn't know was that Avie inherited a kernel at Apple, already under development, and scrapped it for mach. Not sure how to read that yet.

What keeps rearing its head to me, and Gruber apparently agrees, is the absolute disdain of these guys for GUI usability. The same old geek aristocratic pre-assumption that Mac users are chimps. It almost feels like they're saying, "OK, you GUI users want pretty colors and all that visual stuff because you're retards... you obviously don't understand what REAL computers are, well, so here, take that."

What we really need is to put some of the NeXT guys UNDER the 9 guys. Not the other way around. The platinum design team? Put the friggin' band back together and let them call the shots for the Mac's look and feel. Leave the coding to coders. Putting them in charge of usability is like putting the 700 club in charge of sex. It'll always be cheap and tawdry, hey wait, but they can't even get cheap and tawdry right. For chrissakes, don't let them have anything to do with the design of interfaces ever again.

The iTunes installer debacle, by the by, is what we in the provocatuering business call an OMEN. Gruber calls it the worst bug in Apple's history. I call it just what happens when you sell your soul.

Thanks for the link, Max. I really was hoping to do a little reading of the tea leaves here. Them are some revealing leaves.

Tevanian’s stewardship over Apple’s software has been a decidedly mixed bag. Overall, he’s done a tremendous job. But where he’s gone wrong, he’s gone terribly wrong, flashing a spiteful streak that has been largely detrimental to Mac OS X’s overall usability.

The arrogance and spitefulness of this guy might even surpass Jobs. What a travesty to have the Mac's crown jewels in the hands of a guy like this.

Brother thalo said:

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What keeps rearing its head to me, and Gruber apparently agrees, is the absolute disdain of these guys for GUI usability. The same old geek aristocratic pre-assumption that Mac users are chimps. It almost feels like they're saying, "OK, you GUI users want pretty colors and all that visual stuff because you're retards... you obviously don't understand what REAL computers are, well, so here, take that."

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Really, how else could one read this, given what we know? It seems like a reasonable assumption. But I suspect the real problem lies elsewhere, although certainly that attitude is a contributing factor.

When you start out with the assumption (because of arrogance, stupidity, or stubbornness) that the OS 9 GUI isn't good then you've automatically painted yourself into a corner. You're forced to try and come up with something better without using the tried-and-true ideas of some of the best GUI experts who've ever existed. You're forced to try and recreate the wheel without using round things. You end up being different for different's sake, not better, and in this case, much worse.

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What we really need is to put some of the NeXT guys UNDER the 9 guys. Not the other way around. The platinum design team? Put the friggin' band back together and let them call the shots for the Mac's look and feel.

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That's sorta why I brought this to everyone's attention. I knew that Tevanian was the bane of everything Mac. I was hoping against hope that this change would signal something like you have envisioned. Of course, it's doubtful that anything substantive will come out of this.

They've always said that Mac users are a bunch of smug, arrogant SOB's. I suppose they're right. But it's easy to be smug when you have something superior. But my God, nothing beats the arrogance and down-talking smugness of these NeXT guys. They are the Kings of Conceit. And they don't even have a GUI that is worth a shit. Oh, there were a couple good ideas. But because Stevie left Apple and started NeXT, and for ideological and legal reasons, he wasn't going to do anything like the Mac. This extreme attitude has carried over. What a damn shame that these goons ever got their hands on the Mac. A damn shame.

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What a damn shame that these goons ever got their hands on the Mac. A damn shame.

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I hear you.

I was out of breath while reading the part about Mach vs. NuKernel.

What a damn shame.

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I was out of breath while reading the part about Mach vs. NuKernel.

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Yeah, no kidding, brother mAx. I'm totally mystified. That means Apple guys were thinking about how to adapt unix. Apple guys. Then it gets shitcanned because, what, maybe it was too Mac-like? NeXTies could do it better, and this is what we get? Cripes. I would love to see the Tevanian technote that got the ax. Oh my sweet mercy. If anyone has it, you have to post it.

hey I was wondering, who was the Chief Software Technology Officer before Tevanian?

Also regarding Mach vs. NuKernel I read something about that in Amelio's book. When Avie and Steve presented NeXT, they marketed it as a complete solution to Apple's next generation OS. They said it would be ready in no time. So it's understandable that given the desperate situation, they wouldn't want to mess around with the untested, untried, unknown to work NuKernel. Don't get me wrong, I would have loved NuKernel just for the mere fact that it was crafted by Apple itself. It would have been great. But I understand the preference for Mach. NeXT was sold as a complete package, and Mach was part of it.

Damn, I hate NeXT.