A lot of people have doubted the fact that Apple is full of insanely talented people, if you are one of them and you need proof, then just consider some of the following 10 great companies founded by former Apple employees.

Everything started to change when some of the Apple's software engineers started leaving the company to try a debut in their own applications and software companies. Though the number, not more than 30 notable start-ups, is way below the record at Google, whose employees have gone ahead to launch approximately 49 companies according to a thread that popped up on Quora. This low record is believed to have been attributed to by Apple's very secretive, fractious and centered culture whereas Google's culture seems to be more open and even encourages each employee to work on their own individual projects.

The ex-Apple employees have launched companies and are innovating everything from cloud computing to gaming and home appliances. Let us now take a look at the ten most interesting of all start-ups that have come from former Apple employees.

10. Atebits

Loren Britcher, former Apple's Graphic Engineer; now in charge of Twitter's Apple applications. Britcher left Apple after a year with the company to launch Atebits, a software company whose focus was on iPhones and Macs. He is the brain behind the hugely popular "Tweetie" app which Twitter later on purchased. Britcher is currently the man in charge of making official twitter apps for Apple products such as iPhones, iPad and Mac OS X.

9. PayPal and LinkedIn

Reid Hoffman had a well distinguished career in technology, that started at Apple as the Product Manager. Since then he has been a founder at two successful technological start-ups; PayPal and LinkedIn.

8. Agnilux

Agnilux is a stealth start-up company that was founded by Amarjit Gill and co-founded by John Wakerly. This company focuses its time working on servers. The Chip Company started in 2008 by some employees of Apple, shortly after Apple bought the P.A. Semi, a chip start-up. Google has since bought Agnilux.

7. Flipboard

This is another popular iOS that came from the ex-Apple mind of Evan Doll, a former senior engineer at Apple until July 2009 when he moved out and started the company Flipboard. Flipboard takes on twitter, facebook, RSS, and other sources to create a social magazine for the iPad.

6. NeXT and Pixar

NeXT and Pixar were started by Steve Jobs who was once an Apple employee. Of all the Apple employees who went on to start their own companies, or work at start-ups, it is seemingly clear that Steve Jobs has had the most success. He, in fact, helped nurture Pixar into life, and he also started neXT. Pixar is just a runaway success whereas neXT though sort of a flop, Apple bought it and also brought Jobs back to the company. This seemed to have worked out pretty well.

5. Stocktwits

Stocktwits is a social platform for investors. It was founded four years ago by Soren Macbeth, a former Apple's information security analyst in the mid 2000's. It provides stock trade with a way of sharing investing news with one another in real-time.

4. Path

Dave Morin is best known to most people for his time at Facebook. He worked for Facebook on initiatives such as Facebook Connect. What we may not know is that he actually started from Apple where he made a debut in his tech career as a manager in the higher education department. He is the man behind Path, the mobile photo sharing application.

3. The Posterous

The founder of Posterous is none other than Sachin Agarwal, who prior to launching Posterous, was an engineer at Apple for six years. After getting the start-up bug, he left to do Posterous, a simple blogging platform.

2. The Inkling

This is an e-textbook service start-up that focuses on the iPad only. It was started by Matt McInnis who left Apple to try and build his own company that would use Apple's platform.

1. Google's Android software

The man behind the introduction of Android software at Apple in 1989 was Andy Rubin. Andy started his career in the late 80's as an engineer at Apple. He became the CEO of Danger, the company behind the Sidekick for a little while, and was later ousted. This made him start doing Android as an open source mobile software company. Google later bought Android and is currently one of its most successful businesses.