I have a friend at Intel who was offered a job at Apple. He's a manufacturing guy (not circuits/CPU, but still HW). He lives in Portland. They wanted him to move to Cupertino, and offered him 15% more than what he currently makes. Taking COL into account that's a demotion.

So I can believe Apple doesn't pay non-SW folks that much.

It's a problem of overproduction of electrical engineers by academia. I have met graduates of top-30 EE schools who work at quickie marts in North America. I'm not joking about this I was a professor at that top-30 department when I met this graduate.

I was told a lot of EE majors nowadays move to software as soon as they graduate.