Apple shuffles software executives

Apple Computer on Tuesday named Avie Tevanian its new chief software technology officer and promoted Bertrand Serlet to senior vice president of software engineering. Apple said Tevanian will focus on setting companywide software technology directions, while Serlet will manage the company's operating system development team. Serlet will also begin reporting directly to Apple CEO Steve Jobs.

"This will be a seamless handoff," Jobs said in a statement. "Panther, the next major release of Mac OS X, is in great shape and everything is on track to ship it later this year, making this a good time to let Avie return to a more hands-on technical role and to promote Bertrand to lead our entire OS software engineering team."