Disclaimer:
I know many people who had a great time at Apple and that's what attracts me to take the offer at first place. My experience would be mainly about the team (though sadly I cannot name and shame). However, my reflections could hopefully be applied to all future coop/internship.

What's wrong with the team?

My manager was all about micromanaging, office politics, and honestly wasn’t great with technical stuff.

At first, he pushed me to think big and shot down smaller project ideas, which made him seem ambitious. So, I went ahead and proposed a large project that, in hindsight, was too much for the scope of my internship. He approved it, but once I started working on it, it became clear it was really challenging.

Later, my higher-up eventually shot down the idea, and suddenly my manager was like, 'Yeah, I never really supported that idea.' That hit hard. When I try to carry on my internship with another idea, I barely got any help with the actual coding, and when I did ask, his suggestions felt like lazy hacks. Anytime I questioned him, it was basically 'take it or leave it.'

What really blew my mind during the internship was finding out there wasn’t a single senior engineer on the team, and every founding team member had left—except for my manager."

What's wrong with Apple?

Apple on its own has quite some good stuff. Where the hard also cannot be easily overlooked

• Not as many full-time headcount than you though

• Office politics & micromanaging culture

• Secretive

• Slowwww promotion

These factors are really detrimental to any one who want to intern and eventually becoming a Junior software engineer. You might either not getting a full-time offer, or stuck with your level and scope for a really long time.

If you are capable of getting an offer from Apple, I would suggest you look elsewhere!

What's good!

A lot of good stuff about the company too! (Not my team)

• Project based. You can learn a lot and truly have an experience of a project lead that propose and drive your idea.

• Neat office and guideline

• Somewhat chill working schedule

• Glory and Fame. Which you can also get from other top tier companies too

How you can avoid it during interview and offer stage?

Interview Stage:

• Always ask serious questions, don’t try to use the question time trying to please your interviewer 

• “”How many people are in the team?”

• “How long has the team being around”

• “What is the composition of senior to junior ratio in the team?”

• “What’s the rate of people joining the team?”

• “How many intern did you had for the last year?”

  • “Is there any intern conversion to full time?”

If it’s an old team yet with few people it’s a red flag. The manager either cannot get new people, or is losing people

If it’s a team with little senior it’s a red flag. The seniors either left or the manager cannot create enough scope to promote juniors. You won’t receive much room levelling up nor guidance

If the team hasn’t had intern or never converted an intern it’s a red flag.

If the interviewer refuse to answer these question it’s a BIG red flag.

Offer Stage:

• Is the offer clearly outlining the benefits?

• Is your manager responsive and accommodating?

Last Word:

If you still have time for more internships, go and take the offer, you will learn a lot either way.

If you are counting on this for full-time. Don’t go all-in on Apple, just don’t. They have less conversion headcount than you could imagine. Just apply for new grad.