Back when I was studying at university I stumbled upon a message on one of the programming forums that Apple hires interns for the Summer. It was a message from one of the FreeBSD original maintainers who then was hired by Apple, and he was looking for students who were into BSD kernel, who were reading that FreeBSD mailing list. I also found an article My Summer At Apple by Alex Ionescu, where he describes his experience being an intern at Apple.
I write software for macOS X and iOS, learned a lot about low level details of the Macs, including reverse engineering of some of the private Apple frameworks. Also I had been asking a lot of questions on Apple mailing lists, had a chance to talk to a lot of Apple engineers, which developed kind of admiration for their style. So I applied to Apple.
A month later, in October, I received an email from a recuiter at Apple describing an internship role and whether I'd be interested in it. This was the happiest day back then :).
Then there were 2 technical interviews which I passed and an assignment task which I completed, this process stretched for months. Afterwards, there was a visa application process and it all ended in Summer, right after WWDC. I remember a consul at the US Embassy said "Oh wow!" when I said I was invited by Apple. My intership was starting in a few days, and the people at the embassy were very kind to try to get the visa ready in time. Again, luck. This is where I went to California.
My flight deserves a whole another story. I had to take two flights, and in total in took about 15 hours, where in the middle I had been stopped by Lufthansa guys in Frankfurt, who were doubting that I was really invited by Apple and my visa was real. They asked me a whole bunch of questions, made me show all the documents I got, called a few others guys, had a meeting in german which I couldn't understand. Eventually they issued me a new ticket and let me through, I was the last one who got on the plane. Since then I never use Lufthansa.
I arrived to SFO late at night (why didn't I choose San Jose? It would be much easier...), and I hadn't slept the night before, so I was totally tired and lost. Since I had this terrible experience in Frankfurt, I was worried about passing the border control at SFO, but the border control guy was very nice, he just asked me few questions and wished me luck with a smile. I planned to get to Sunnyvale from SFO on a train, and then take a cab to Cupertino, but the flight was delayed and I missed the last Caltrain. So I went to a ticket cabin and ask how to get to Cupertino, they suggested to take a bus, which I did and which was driving along a huge El Camino Real street, until I got into Palo Alto. Then I took one of the seldom-passing taxis and got to my apartment in Cupertino at about midnight. Next morning, at 7 am, I had to go to Apple campus. Luckily I lived in Cupertino so it wasn't very far away.
What we had at Apple was very similar as Alex described in his post. There were different events, we went to a baseball game for example (it was freezing cold in San Francisco, when the evening came - lots of rooters were wearing just T-shirts and shorts, and I was literally shaking by the end of the game. But on the bus I got to talk to a nice guy from University relations, learned from him more about the company and told him about myself). One of the other events was going to Santa Cruz boardwalk, and Apple paid for the day of any amusement park's rides. I met two guys there, also interns, Jade and Mikael and a hacker girl Jessie.
There was an event, where we got to meet different engineers from Apple from various teams. Hardware teams had demonstrated different products disassembled and explained what kind of efforts they had to do to make the devices the way they were. There were also "Apple Talks", where we all got into an auditorium and different VPs and Tim Cook gave speeches.
After much struggle I ended up with a working prototype of my project. It really was challenging, it wasn't anything like smooth things when you exactly have a plan what to do, a lot of research, trial and error, lots of disappointments, before any results finally showed up. I showed it to my mentor and he said I should work on a presentation and a demo from now on. It turned out that the presentation was as important as the project itself. You can make a great product, but if you suck at presenting it and demonstrating how its useful, it wouldn't matter how much work you've put into it. So I created a keynote, had a couple of rehearsals alone and with my team, and eventually presented it in front of my origanisation's committee. My project won.
In a week or so there was a presentation to the senior vice president of software, Craig Federighi. In fact, there were a lot of people invited to watch our presentations, various directors and engineers. There were 5 of us, interns, whose projects were selected to be presented, and the next day after the presentation all 5 of us went to have a dinner with Craig. I was surprised to see an idea that I had shared during this dinner was brought to life later.
On weekends I visited San Francisco and other cities in Silicon Valley. The only bad thing was is when you don't have a car/a driver's license, you have to take public transport, which is terrible in valley. The distances are huge, but there are very few buses, especially on weekends. Using the public transport It takes about two or more hours to get to San Francisco from Cupertino, where I lived. It gets cold in the evening in SF, while it can be still very hot in Cupertino, just an hour drive away.
The food at the "Cafe Macs", where employees go to have lunch, is not free, it costs like $12 depending on what you eat, the most various choice they offered were salads which I hated, but it looked like the stuff they have available is healthy. Apart from that they offer some italian food, pizzas, burgers, asian and seafood. Unfortunately no my local food. On the first week I got to attend a lecture of a dietologist, who explained what kind of food it is preferred to eat to stay healthy.
It seemed like interns have even better living than the employees themselves. The values of the company are remarkable, every little detail is carefully thought out with a great attention. Everything is obscure, happening behind the stage, and made look mysterious, you never get to see the whole picture, whatever position you have. The whole company is about surprises not only to customers but to the interns and newly hires. At least that's what it was back then.
Perhaps for this secrecy reason people at the company while being themselves reticent, expect you to be honest and open, which makes the interaction kind of one sided. Is it bad? I don't know. But it certainly leaves an unpleasant aftertaste. To be fair though, I believe that once you are an employee and you get in the loop this attitude changes.