Every now and again an Apple person will pop up on the Xcode mailing list to tell people to submit a bug report on Radar. They sometimes also reassure all that, yes, despite all evidence to the contrary, bug reports DO get read - though I note that they are always extremely careful to promise no more than that.

They sometimes do, even if you don't count shutting down the operations for a week every WWDC. Examples:

* http://www.macworld.com/article/1167247/cook_apple_planning_...

* http://daringfireball.net/2012/02/mountain_lion

Unless by "outside" you mean those they don't reach out to, but that would be true by definition and so fairly moot.