44 of the hardest questions Apple will ask in a job interview

Getty Images/Stephen Lam

This guy could be your boss.

Apple is one of the most prestigious companies in the world, so it’s not surprising to learn that getting a job there isn’t easy.

Apple asks both technical interview questions, based on your past work experience, and some mind-boggling puzzles.

And if you’re interviewing to work at Apple’s retail stores, you’ll be asked a lot of questions about how you’d handle an angry customer. 

We combed through posts on Glassdoor to find some of the toughest interview questions candidates have been asked.

Some require solving tricky math problems, while others are simple but vague enough to keep you on your toes.

Lisa Eadicicco, Nathan McAlone, and Maya Kosoff contributed to an earlier version of this story.

“We have a cup of hot coffee and a small cold milk out of the fridge. The room temperature is in between these two. When should we add milk to coffee to get the coolest combination earliest (at the beginning, in the middle, or at the end)?” —Product Design Engineer candidate

“How much does the Empire State Building weigh?” — Solutions Consultant candidate

“How do you check if a binary tree is a mirror image on left and right sub-trees?” – Research scientist candidate

“What superhero would you be and why?” – Retail candidate

“Explain what RAM is to a five year old.” — Apple Genius candidate

“How does an airplane wing work?” — Lead Systems Engineer candidate

“Draw the inside architecture of an iPhone” — Hardware Test Design Lead candidate

“Give me 5 ways of measuring how much gasoline is in a car.” — Hardware Engineering candidate

“If you have 2 eggs, and you want to figure out what’s the highest floor from which you can drop the egg without breaking it, how would you do it? What’s the optimal solution?” — Software Engineer candidate

“How would you break down the cost of this pen?” — Global Supply Manager candidate

“Describe an interesting problem and how you solved it.” — Software Engineer candidate

“Explain to an 8 year old what a modem/router is and its functions.” — At-Home Advisor candidate

“How many children are born every day?” — Global Supply Manager candidate

“You have a 100 coins laying flat on a table, each with a head side and a tail side. 10 of them are heads up, 90 are tails up. You can’t feel, see or in any other way find out which side is up. Split the coins into two piles such that there are the same number of heads in each pile.” — Software Engineer candidate

“How would you test your favorite app?” — Software QA Engineer candidate

“There are three boxes, one contains only apples, one contains only oranges, and one contains both apples and oranges. The boxes have been incorrectly labeled such that no label identifies the actual contents of the box it labels. Opening just one box, and without looking in the box, you take out one piece of fruit. By looking at the fruit, how can you immediately label all of the boxes correctly?” — Software QA Engineer candidate

“Scenario: You’re dealing with an angry customer who was waiting for help for the past 20 minutes and is causing a commotion. She claims that she’ll just walk over to Best Buy or the Microsoft Store to get the computer she wants. Resolve this issue.” — Specialist candidate

“A man calls in and has an older computer that is essentially a brick. What do you do?” — Apple Care At-Home Consultant candidate

“Are you smart?” — Build Engineer candidate

“What are your failures, and how have you learned from them?” — Software Manager candidate

“Have you ever disagreed with a manager’s decision, and how did you approach the disagreement? Give a specific example and explain how you rectified this disagreement, what the final outcome was, and how that individual would describe you today.” — Software Engineer candidate

“You put a glass of water on a record turntable and begin slowly increasing the speed. What happens first — does the glass slide off, tip over, or does the water splash out?” — Mechanical Engineer candidate

“Tell me something that you have done in your life which you are particularly proud of.” — Software Engineering Manager candidate

“Are you creative? What’s something creative that you can think of?” — Software Engineer candidate

“Describe a humbling experience.” — Apple Retail Specialist candidate

“What’s more important, fixing the customer’s problem or creating a good customer experience?” — Apple At Home Advisor candidate

“Why did Apple change its name from Apple Computers Incorporated to Apple Inc.?” — Specialist candidate

“You seem pretty positive, what types of things bring you down?” — Family Room Specialist candidate

“Show me (role play) how you would show a customer you’re willing to help them by only using your voice.” — College At-Home Advisor candidate

“What brings you here today?” — Software Engineer candidate

“Given an iTunes type of app that pulls down lots of images that get stale over time, what strategy would you use to flush disused images over time?” — Software Engineer candidate

“If you’re given a jar with a mix of fair and unfair coins, and you pull one out and flip it 3 times, and get the specific sequence heads heads tails, what are the chances that you pulled out a fair or an unfair coin?” — Lead Analyst candidate

“What was your best day in the last 4 years? What was your worst?” — Engineering Project Manager candidate

“When you walk in the Apple Store as a customer, what do you notice about the store/how do you feel when you first walk in?” — Specialist candidate

“Why do you want to join Apple and what will you miss at your current work if Apple hired you?” — Software Engineer candidate

“How would you test a toaster?” — Software QA Engineer candidate

“If you are to go up the mountain one day and come down the next day, leaving at the same time, will you ever be at the same place at the same time of day?” —Technical Lead candidate at Apple.

“Are you the type of person people come to for technical issues?”— Retail specialist candidate

“62-63=1; Changing only one element (either digit or operand), make this statement true.” — Software Development Test Engineer candidate

“What is your favorite ice cream?” — Administrative assistant candidate

“How do you create an efficient supply chain model?” —
WW Supply Demand Planner candidate.

“Describe a time when you hurt a friend and how did you handle it?” — Technical specialist candidate

“How would you plan a hand gliding trip for your colleagues to North Korea?” — Hardware Test Design Lead

“What sort of data would you ask for when looking to bring iPhone to a new market?”— Finance candidate at Apple

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