AJ Nettles wants to work at Apple one day after meeting CEO Tim Cook.

The second-year student attending the University of Alabama at Birmingham has affirmed his journey in cybersecurity, one that began at an early age tinkering with computers while living in the small town of Monroeville, AL.

“Our family had our first computer near when I was 5, and I really had fun interacting and playing around with it, learning about the internet and things like that,” Nettles told AFROTECH™. “Then I like to play games, so that kind of helped feed back into learning about technology overall, like computer science, and thinking about how it works and stuff. I was first exposed to it when I was young.”

By the time Nettles reached the end of his time at Monroe County High School, he gained robotics experience and became more interested in learning about computer science and building technologies.

“I had a bunch of different accounts for everything to play my games and email and all that. And I used to use a very, very weak password,” he explained. “So sometimes I woke up and had an email saying, ‘Hi, someone’s logged into your account from Australia.’ And I’m like, ‘I’m not in Australia.’ So issues like that. Just kind of learning how to better protect my accounts and reduce these emails from coming in saying that my account’s been compromised or someone’s trying to break in and take everything that I’ve pretty much like worked for. It kind of helped push me towards cybersecurity and finding how I can help others secure their stuff.”

Developing CryptOh?

This would later manifest in an application he titled “CryptOh?” It was created through Apple’s Swift Student Challenge, designed to empower rising developers, creators, and entrepreneurs.

Nettles learned of the challenge after creating an Apple developer account as he aspires to work at the company in the future. In doing so, he received an email from Apple on a random night in February 2024 sharing information about the challenge. The requirement is for students to conceptualize and bring an idea to life that can be experienced in three minutes using Swift Playgrounds and Xcode, per Apple’s website.

“CryptOh” is the 2024 winner and was chosen for its interactive guide that educates users on password security. Users will receive a response to baseline questions that address why passwords should be complex and why special characters are preferred, among others. Additionally, the application serves as a password manager and generator, allowing users to store their passwords in one application. In the event that they forget a password, the application can also generate and store a new password in its systems.

For security, the application requires user authentication with face ID or a passcode.

“I wanted to make it easier for people to store their passwords and not have them on a random sticky note on the edge of their computer,” he explained.

Meeting Tim Cook

Nettles, who is among the 50 Distinguished Winners of Apple’s Swift Student Challenge out of 350 winners, was able to demo his application to Cook during the Worldwide Developers Conference’s three-day experience held in June 2024 at Apple Park in Cupertino, CA.

Nettles describes meeting Cook as a “dream” that he will forever cherish.

“Me being at Apple Park already once-in-a-lifetime opportunity,” he expressed. “Me presenting an app that I made to some of the leadership there, incredible. To the CEO of Apple, insane… He was asking questions. He was engaged with it. He was like, ‘What inspired you to make this’ just because of all the breaches that are happening recently and everything like that. He was actually invested in why I made it. It just made the experience that much more surreal… That’s a memory I’ll probably never forget.”

What’s Next

Looking ahead, Nettles plans to graduate college with his master’s in cybersecurity on Aug. 10, 2024. He feels even more hopeful about his future in the technology space, which has always been supported by family and friends. Now he can continue to innovate with the intention of building features and products that are changing lives for the better.