It would be nice if you could elaborate how are they terribly wrong?

Some projects have been approved and have internal "champions" of the project and you can get approval more easily for those projects since it's not a one-off, and a non-VP has been granted authority to approve upstreaming patches to the project they champion.

It's largely a waste of time due to the extreme anti corp bias on HN, but the idea that Apple employees don't value or contribute to OS is extremely misleading.

I'm not reading that Apple employees don't value OS in OP's message, I'm reading that Apple is banning OS contributions, unless special exemptions are given, and that it is hard to get those.

Is OP wrong in his description of Apple's rules and permission wrt OS?

That's a correct summary. This is the reason why people who join Apple suddenly abandon their OSS projects.

It's worth noting there was a huge debate internally about this around the time I left, with many people dissatisfied with the policy.

>It's largely a waste of time due to the extreme anti corp bias on HN

I like this. Sums up a lot of things about HN.