Maybe the opposite at Apple? I was told by another engineer (paraphrasing), "They can't lay you off past age 50 without expecting an age-discrimination lawsuit. They'd prefer to give you nothing to do and you leave on your own."
But your performance reviews don’t have anything to do with age, so I don’t see how that could be.
Perhaps you mean "fire" not "lay off"? Generally layoffs are structured to avoid discrimination risks.