Apple isn't the best example. For instance their Safari development team is already severely underfunded, there is barely anyone to fire.
Over hiring then laying some off shouldn't be a catastrophe in tech.
I also think people would have less issue with these layoffs if CEOs didn't make it sound like a short term critical business decision while being worth hundreds of millions of dollars.
They could be, or not. They seem to issue a preview release every two weeks or so[0], so they are clearly making progress on something.