My Journey Through the Apple Developer Academy
Kevin Bryan
In 2023, I was fortunate enough to intern at the Apple Developer Academy @BINUS. The 10 months I spent there, from March to December, were filled with incredible learning and growth. Looking back, it was one of the most rewarding experiences of my life.
First, let's address the elephant in the room: the perks. Yes, we were given a free Mac, iPhone, and Apple Watch. This, along with a monthly stipend of approximately 2.5 million IDR, was a fantastic bonus. The stipend might not seem like much, but for about 4 hours of work each day, I was incredibly grateful. Beyond the material benefits, we were each assigned a personal mentor who guided our individual development. We also had group mentors who helped our project teams, ensuring the products we created were real solutions, not just weekend apps.
While the financial and material benefits were great, the real value of the academy came from the projects. We worked on 10 projects in total, ranging from two-week sprints to a massive final project with a three-month deadline. This format allowed me to discover my role within a team. I learned so much about project management, Apple-esque system design, and iOS development. However, the most significant skills I gained were soft skills: critical thinking and problem-solving using the design thinking process. I learned the importance of constantly validating our app ideas to ensure they genuinely solved a problem.
Another huge takeaway was flexibility and adaptability. You're not working with the same five people for ten months; instead, you are randomly assigned to different teammates for each project. Some left me speechless with their talent, while others challenged me to ponder new perspectives. This constant change was amazing because it taught us how to manage social interactions and appreciate the positive qualities of each individual. It was here that I also made lasting friendships with people who are still close to me today, even though we've all gone on different paths.
My final project, Mission A1, was a particularly memorable experience. We set out to create an ambitious 3D open-world mini-game. Despite the challenge, we managed to complete it and ship the project for the final exhibition. While our game might not have been as polished or visually stunning as a title like Zelda, I am incredibly proud of what we accomplished. We had only three months to develop the game from scratch, and none of our dev team had any prior experience in game development or Unity. I was assigned as the tech lead, and being able to monitor, manage, and lead a team of both coders and non-coders to finish the project was a milestone I'll always remember. Like many of our projects, the ideation phase took the most time. However, this rigorous process made our final app incredibly robust. Back then, we didn't have tools like ChatGPT to validate our ideas instantly, so we had to rely on our own collaborative brainstorming and research.
On the technical side, one of the most rewarding parts of our development was working with SwiftUI. We were among the first cohorts to extensively use this newly introduced framework. It was so much fun and so convenient to build our user interfaces with it. However, after finishing the program, I quickly discovered a new challenge: finding a job that fully utilized SwiftUI was tough. Most major companies, especially those with large legacy codebases, were still heavily reliant on UIKit. It was a difficult transition, as I had to learn how to adapt and apply my new skills to a different, more established paradigm.
Looking back, there are honestly very few downsides to the experience. Yes, it's more of an apprenticeship than a traditional corporate internship where you might land a full-time job. But the learning, friendships, and invaluable soft skills I gained in management, development, and design make it one of the most rewarding experiences I've ever had.
