They just didn't hire a lot like other companies. No cloud or AI bandwagon with tons of hiring and then later finding no work recently hired folks. Also work conditions were more traditional and stiff compared to pure software play companies so lot of people weren't falling over each other to get job at Apple.

Also Apple is good at lot of outsourced work for long time compared to many other companies. So they don't tons of non-core software stuff in-house. In that matter they are more like typical Fortune 500 companies than SV company.