I was pleasantly surprised to have been selected from an online app. It seems to me this rarely occurs. After a couple of phone conversations with a recruiter who sounded very energetic and happy with her job, I was invited out for a 1 hr lunch interview. I met the recruiter who passed me off to a member of the product design team. I was previously told I'd be meeting 3 people, only 1 made it. He told me a bit about his job. Asked me about my school and work experiences. Hit me with a few "encyclopedia" type questions like "which is stronger, titanium or steel". Apparently I passed the lunch interview so they gave me a 1 week design test. This homework was a project to see how I would design a battery door on the iPod if it were to be offered with replaceable batteries. the culture is very casual. Both my interviewer and recruiter had tight black jeans on. The recruiter wore a black v-neck t-shirt and chuck taylor's. I have never been in a work environment like that before. Certainly different. After I submitted the presentation with CAD drawings, etc. for my design test, they never got back to me. Blew off phone calls, email. I'm less than pleased with more and more companies adopting this non-confrontational rejection approach.

This was a pretty intense interview process. It began with a 1 on 1 lunch interview that lasted about an hour. Next was a design test, I had a week to design a mechanism which they specified. They wanted to see a report with pictures of my CAD, my thought process, some quick calculations, possibly more in depth FEA, a BOM, etc. The day after I turned in this report, I received an invite to come in for a full day of interviewing. This full day consisted of several interviews. Every half hour was a new interview, and each interview felt rushed--you've gotta be on your toes. Almost every interviewer brought a piece from an Apple product and asked me what material it was and how it was made. Be prepared to rattle off 3 or 4 different techniques to decipher between steel and aluminum. There was also a lunch interview which started off casual, talking about our hobbies, etc. But then I was asked how my water bottle was manufactured and what material it was, and then more and more engineering questions were fired off again. Overall, things you definitely need to know: - stress/strain diagrams and all of their important points - different engineering metals (stainless steel, aluminum, titanium, magnesium, etc.) and where they sit respective to one another in their specs (Modulus of elasticity, density, tensile strength, magnetic or nonmagnetic) - dfferent engineering platics (PC, ABS, Delrin, etc) and their primary uses. - overall different manufacturing processes and their corresponding constraints. - know basic deflection equations and be able to work through a deflection problem. Many of these reviews tell you to be sure not to stress out. The Apple engineers definitely do try to break you and stress you out. However, I think my biggest mistake was overcompensating for this. I didn't stress out at all, but as a result, I also didn't push myself to think critcally enough, and I think that is where they saw my fault. If I had made it past this round, they would have brought me back in to present my design project. In the end, if anything, this was a great interview experience.