Apple Interview Guide
Mission & Culture
Mission
Apple designs Macs, the best personal computers in the world, along with OS X, iLife, iWork and professional software. Apple leads the digital music revolution with its iPods and iTunes online store. Apple has reinvented the mobile phone with its revolutionary iPhone and App store, and is defining the future of mobile media and computing devices with iPad.
Vision
We believe that we are on the face of the earth to make great products and that's not changing. We are constantly focusing on innovating. We believe in the simple, not the complex. We believe that we need to own and control the primary technologies behind the products that we make and participate only in markets where we can make a significant contribution. We believe in saying no to thousands of projects so that we can really focus on the few that are truly important and meaningful to us. We believe in deep collaboration and cross-pollination of our groups, which allow us to innovate in a way that others cannot. And frankly, we don't settle for anything less than excellence in every group in the company, and we have the self-honesty to admit when we're wrong and the courage to change. And I think regardless of who is in what job those values are so embedded in this company that Apple will do extremely well.
Great products
We believe that we’re on the face of the Earth to make great products, and that’s not changing.
Simple, not complex
We’re constantly focusing on innovating. We believe in the simple, not the complex.
Ecosystem
We believe that we need to own and control the primary technologies behind the products we make.
Collaboration
We believe in deep collaboration and cross-pollination of our groups, which allow us to innovate in a way that others cannot.
Say No
We believe in saying no to projects so that we can really focus on the few that are truly important and meaningful to us.
Excellence
We participate only in markets where we can make a significant contribution.
Accept mistakes
We don’t settle for anything less than excellence in every group in the company and we have the self-honesty to admit when we're wrong and the courage to change.
Company
Apple transformed itself in the last decade, has a cult-like fan following due to its high-end products.
However, as Apple company has grown, it has lost some of its original character.
Apple has a strong culture of corporate secrecy, care must be exercised working on such confidential projects.
Work-life balance can be challenging depending on the team.
Apple does offer excellent compensation par to other FAANG companies.
Apple created the Apple Fellows program which awards individuals who make extraordinary technical or leadership contributions.
5 Engineering levels :
- ICT2 (SDE I)
- ICT3 (SDE II)
- ICT4 (SDE III)
- ICT5 (SDE IV)
- ICT6 (SDE V)
Management levels:
- M1 (Entry Manager)
- M2 (Manager)
- M3 (Senior Manager)
- D1 (Director)
- D2 (Senior Director )
Products
- Macintosh
- iPhone
- iPad
- Apple Watch
- Apple TV
- macOS/iOS/iPad/OSwatch/OStv
Services
- App Store
- Apple Arcade
- Apple Card
- Apple Music Beats
- Apple News
- +Apple Pay
- iCloud
- iMessage
- App Store
- Samsung - Tablets, Displays, TV
- Microsoft - Windows vs MacOSX
- Google - Android vs iOS, Chromebook, Pixel Phone, Fitbit
- Dell - PC vs Mac
- Paypal - Online payments vs Apple card
- Tesla - Electric cars vs Apple iCar
- Amazon - PlayStore, Streaming Video
- Employee Discounts - 25% on hardware and 50% on software.
- Maternity Leave - Up to 18 weeks of leave with full pay.
- Work From Home - Flex Work
- Commuting Benefits - Shuttle services
- Free Snacks
- Donation-Matching - For work done to help nonprofits.
- Gym Credit - up to $300
- Paid Time Off Employees - 30 days of paid time off annually.
- Stock Purchase Program
- Tuition Reimbursement.
- Job Training opportunities.
Software Engineer
Process
- Initial Phone Screen
- Initial phone screen with a recruiter including technical questions.
- Phone Interview with Hiring Manager
- Phone screen by the hiring manager.
- Online Technical Interview
- Technical phone interview with an engineer involving coding challenges.
- Onsite interview
- The onsite consists of 4 technical interview rounds and 1 lunch interview.
- Most of the questions are related to coding and technical software concepts with some behavioral questions.
Notes
- The usual interview process takes 4-6 weeks.
- Coding interviews and system design rounds are whiteboard based.
- Each interview round is 45minutes -1 hour long.
Linked list with a random node.
Validate an Anagram.
Conditional variables, mutexes, and semaphores in OS.
Given an array of integers nums sorted in ascending order, find the starting and ending position of a given target value.
Merge k sorted linked lists and return it as one sorted list. Analyze and describe its complexity.
Given a binary search tree and a node in it, find the in-order successor of that node in the BST.
Find the Median from Data Stream.
Given an array of meeting time intervals consisting of start and end times, find the minimum number of conference rooms required.
Multithreading concepts.
Given a string, find the length of the longest substring T that contains at most k distinct characters.
Given a stream of integers and a window size, calculate the moving average of all integers in the sliding window.
Given a deck of cards, write a method to determine if it is "flush".
Reverse a doubly linked list.
Focus on OS Concepts: Semaphores, the difference between thread/process, 64 vs 32 bit addressing.
Find the least common ancestor of two nodes in a tree.
Given an integer, write code to list all primes preceding it.
Find an if a circular loop in a linked list.
- Design Evernote.
- Design a Data Center.
- Design Instagram.
- Design a synchronization primitive for the operating system/kernel.
- Design an instant messenger platform.
- Design a URL shortener.
- Design a game leaderboard displaying top rankers from different regions.
- Design Facebook NewsFeed feature.
- Design a Java client to call REST API.
- Design Twitter.
- Describe an interesting problem and how you solved it.
- What could you have done better?
- Why Apple?
- What would you want to do 5 years from now?
- We encourage innovation at Apple. What does innovation mean to you?
- If we hired you, what do you want to work on?
- What were some excellent collaborations you've had?
- How do you determine priorities when you have multiple projects due?
- How do you deal with conflict?
- What kinds of technologies are you most excited about?
- Tell me about a time you went above and beyond for a customer.
- Tell me about a time you had an innovative idea that had a positive impact.
- How did you handle a task where you had a deadline that you couldn’t meet?
- Tell me time when you have to make a pivot and choose a different approach or solution.
- How did you bring value to your last position?
Google 
Facebook 
Amazon 
Netflix 
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