I had two interview sessions this morning. I am not a morning person.

One question pertained to tree traversal, a basic CS topic. It wasn't difficult, but if you haven't memorized the routine, you have to work it out on the fly. A decent question.

Another question pertained to keeping a table of custom table view cells fully updated with images. Again, not difficult, as I've done this before.

Before arriving, I was asked to write an app similar to what they produce, which was not difficult and took six hours. I'll be putting a variant thereof in the App Store.

Very little phone screening was required before the interview was set up, which was irksome. It suggests that "culture fit" is what they're really trying to assess. I'm a dude, but if they don't hire me, I hope they'll hire a female programmer to add some diversity.

Areas for improvement for Apple:

1. Don't assume everyone is a morning person :)
2. Do a couple of technical interviews over the phone beforehand, like Google does.

Given an iTunes-type app that pulls down lots of images that get stale over time, what strategy would you use to flush disused images over time?