cross pond high tech

Bertrand Serlet is widely considered to be the brains behind Apple's Mac operating system. He was even mentioned as a possible successor to Steve Jobs at one point. So it came as a shock to some when Serlet decided to step down in March, 2011 after 22 years with the company.

At the time, Serlet offered a vague explanation for his decision, noting that he wanted to "focus less on products and more on science." He didn't mention any specific plans at the time and has effectively dropped off the radar, until now.

Business Insider has learned that Serlet has spent much of the time since his departure from Apple working with at least two other former Apple employees to launch a cloud computing startup in downtown Palo Alto called 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.