I applied online and was contacted by an Apple recruiter within a week via email. She provided details about the position and the name of the team interested in my profile.

Following that, I had a 45-minute telephonic interview with a member of the hiring team. I was primarily asked about my PhD/postdoc research work and was also informed about Apple's privacy and confidentiality regarding work done there. The interviewer was very pleasant and respected my position and what I was looking for.

After the first round of phone interview, Apple scheduled an onsite interview within two weeks at their head office in Cupertino. The pre-interview process was very smooth – they flew me over and arranged a nice hotel for a night's stay.

My onsite interview lasted for about 5-6 hours, during which I met ten people from the Core OS team, including the hiring manager and the VP. I was asked a variety of questions in computer networking, wireless communications, and my research work. I was also asked to solve problems on paper and code on the whiteboard.

I was able to answer 90% of the questions. Some questions required thinking on the spot, and the interviewers were very helpful in giving hints if I got stuck.

In summary, Apple has a very smooth hiring process and takes good care of potential hires. My entire trip was covered by Apple and reimbursed on time. Apple's culture was pleasant, as was the working environment. I was impressed with their Cupertino office.

They extended an offer within two weeks of the onsite interview.

I was asked about some non-trivial design questions regarding a software app that I had developed in grad school.

There was also a question about designing the interface for storing the number of bytes in a file from an online application and reading it by another application.