[bryanallen22]

My experiences were similar. I had several interviews with Apple:

1) Several phone interviews for an internship. They don't do fly outs for internships, if I remember correctly. I never finished this process because I took another position before the interviews were complete.

2) Phone interviews and fly out for a position about 1 year ago. The team had good things to say about me, but it wasn't a good fit for either myself or that team. I was referred to another part of Apple, where I started over.

3) Phone interviews and fly out for a different position just one week after #2. In a spat of horrible luck, I lost my contact lens at the hotel that morning. I decided that a makeshift eyepatch wouldn't look good, but having only 1 contact lens in gave me a splitting headache. As I struggled more than I should have, I felt them grow more cold. I was kindly told that the interviews were over about 3/4 of the way through.

Similar to jaysonelliot, I didn't sign an NDA and didn't leave the interview room except for lunch.

A few notable things about my interviews:

I was asked to code over the phone. That's much harder than white board coding, in my opinion. It was something fairly easy, though (atoi in c, or something like that).

I felt like I was judged on my Apple culture. When I revealed that I didn't know Objective C, that didn't seem to matter to much, but when I revealed that I didn't own an iPhone or a Mac, I did feel that my answers weren't what they were hoping.

The questions were very broad. Because I come from both a hardware and a software background, I was asked about everything from basic power dissipation to more traditional CS topics.

Honestly, I felt a much more happy and welcome atmosphere at Microsoft, which surprised me. It was kind of the opposite of the consumer perspectives of those companies.

[cosbynator]

I had an on-campus interview for an internship years ago that contrasts this a bit. It was about 30 minutes and there was no second interview. There were absolutely no technical questions. I was asked about whether I had experience with Apple products and development and the interviewer wasn't too offended when I said no. Absolutely no coding. The interviewer didn't seem to really care about the job description that was posted.

I was asked about some problem solving I had to do at a previous internship and I talked about how setjmp/longjmp saved my skin once. The interviewer seemed more pleased in the fact that I was excited about the solution than the fact that I had one.

Unlike you, I found it refreshing. I got the impression that they cared more about passion than obscure technical answers. In the end, I took another offer instead but it was a difficult decision to make.