If they could abolish cutting corners on displays, that would be great. I don't mind Apple doing things their own special way, but when everyone else copies them, it gets annoying, especially so in a market that doesn't have many options.
This might offend some people, but tech companies and managers do not want rock star programmers. If you're a "rock star" 0.25x programmer, then your job will always be lost to the boring 1x jobbers that apply for the position. Rock star hires constitute less than 5% of the workforce in the places I've worked at.
I know that Apple's got a reputation for "Think Different" and all that, but it really sounds like OP is upset at not getting their dream job, and now they're taking it out on Apple like it's their fault somehow. If you think Apple's hiring process is a catastrophic failure, you probably shouldn't mourn the lost opportunity to interact with the rest of their bureaucracy and management. A good "Never meet your heroes" lesson for the 21st century.
"Maybe Apple just doesn't want you" assumes, incorrectly, that Apple has enough information to know that. I'm not in their funnel for them to decide they don't want me. Apple has no clue.
Apple made trillions of dollars without cold-calling random professionals to fill their seats. From their perspective, hiring engineers through applications gives them a lot more leverage than going down a list and negotiating terms with each person they selected.