Sometimes an organisation has what I would call "Vanity Hires". People hired not because they really make much sense as part of the organisation but because their celebrity "rubs off" on the org by association.

These can be very transactional, they take your money and if they have a notional place of work (not so necessary in the era of WFH) you give them a broom closet somewhere as an "office" which they will never visit.

Or at the other end of the spectrum they try to actually be helpful, perhaps because they actually did want to do whatever it is you wrote on the hiring paperwork, and this might even be a productive relationship, at worst it's a distraction for anybody whose interest you've struggled to maintain and don't want to let go. Hey, go help uh, Doctor Frankenstein with his project to (checks notes) invent a new machine to replace Geese for some reason.

Given Apple's wealth I'd expect some mix of "Vanity Hires" and people who really are expected to do important strategic work for the $$$. As I described, to some extent you can't tell. If you've never heard of them, maybe that's just because you don't know their area of expertise, and equally even if they seem to be working their backside off, maybe they're just like that and Apple was astonished that they actually showed up and started working.