Apple is in a weird spot. They’re probably sitting on a metric shit-ton of cash, and happily bucked the trend of laying off their employees (for a while). They were in a position to grow and expand as a tech company, while everyone else was restricting themselves.
Sadly, they haven’t looked to solidify their position for years, and outside of the Apple Watch, there have been very few true innovations from Apple for a long time. Apple actually have an extensive applied ML science team (source: have worked with them), but like many of their divisions, they just don’t have the faith to pull the trigger and truly invest in them.
Apple right now just…kinda exist. They make shareholders a lot of money, and they churn out incremental updates that keep fans happy, but is that a tactic for long-term success, or a sign of a business that’s out of direction?
I graduated in CS alongside a guy in his fifties. He’s now retired, but he had easily 10-15 years as a software engineer, and was the lead of a group at a large company before he retired, so I assume it all went well for him.
If you want to learn something, do it. if you want to do it professionally, do it.