I applied through an employee referral. The process took 5 days. I interviewed at Apple (Cupertino, CA) in Oct 2010
Interview
The phone interview consisted of just questions about my past work experience. Then got called for an on-site interview. The interview lasted 5 hrs with 30 min interviews with 10 people, including one with HR. Most of the questions were about my past experience here as well. Included a lot of drawing on the white board to explain the architecture of software I had worked on. There were some programming questions as well, which were quite simple, like code for fibonacci series and factorial using both recursive and non-recursive methods, counting the number of 1s in a variable, writing code for a circular buffer. Also had questions on OS, like memory management, interrupt handling, preemption etc. I thought I did well, but did not receive an offer.
Write code for generating a factorial/fibonacci for a given number using both recursive and non-recursive methods. Advantages and disadvantages of each method.
I applied through a recruiter. The process took 1 day. I interviewed at Apple in Jul 2010
Interview
I was contacted by a recruiter through LinkedIn describing job opportunities at Apple. I currently work in a very narrow area of expertise, which is 3D graphics for embedded systems, and so they thought I was a good fit for their position. I explained to the recruiter that in order for me to switched jobs the position had to appeal me and so he said I was going to be interviewing for a Display Controller role, which of course I wasn't that excited about, then he said that there were more positions opening up and that I could interview for any of them, so I agreed after I saw a Software Engineering role. The recruiter scheduled the phone interview a week later and he said the manager of one of the teams was going to do the interview. To be honest I really prepared for this phone interview and I concentrated on generic Computer Graphics concepts, Operating System concepts and C++ concepts, and to my surprise that were exactly the topics we covered during the interview. To my surprised though the manager of the team didn't show up but rather a technical lead with a very strong asian accent, so I was asking to repeat himself on my occasions. In general I thought I did a decent interview as I was fully prepared yet he thought I wasn't really a good fit for the position; I had the feeling because they were so desperately trying to fill the display controller role for which I already said no, yet during the phone interview the tech lead guy did ask me if I was interested on that role!
I applied through a recruiter. The process took 3 days. I interviewed at Apple in Jun 2010
Interview
The recruiter contacted me regarding a role I should have, at least at the surface level, been very qualified for, given previous professional experience for a competitor. After a few e-mail exchanges and a phone screening with the recruiter, a call was set up with the hiring manager. If it was the recruiter's intention to get me hired, it would have been wise to provide better details regarding the type of person/expertise the team was looking for. Advertising a search for a particular skill set but really wanting a different set led to an unfortunately unrewarding phone interview with the hiring manager, from my side, and a waste of time for the hiring manager. Whether the fault lies with a lack of communication between the recruiter and the hiring manager or the recruiter and the prospective candidate (me), the pivotal role here is the recruiter.