Apple

Red Apples are food items that were added in early Indev. Apples exist in Beta mode, as well as the removed Indev, Infdev and Alpha modes. Apples heal, but are not a reliable food source.

When Indev was still new, Apples were items brought in to replace Brown Mushrooms to heal health. The player would spawn in an Indev House by a chest containing 99 Apples, among other tools. In later updates, the chests inside the House were removed, and Apples became impossible to find in a map.

Apples remained impossible to find until Survival Multiplayer. To find one, the player must kill Notch. In addition to his inventory, Notch will drop a Red Apple. The only other way to obtain apples is to hack the player's inventory.

Jeb has tweeted that he wants to somehow make apples obtainable in the game.

Crafting
Apples can be used to craft a Golden Apple. While healing all 10 hearts, it is very expensive to make, requiring 72 gold ingots.

Advantages

 * Red Apples are used to make golden apples, which heal, but require a large amount of gold (72 gold ingots).

Disadvantages

 * Red Apples are near impossible to get legitimately and only heal.
 * NOT true - chop the middle part of a tree out and some of the branches. Sometimes you'll get apples right away; sometimes you'll get them later, if you come back and chop out more of the branches.  Either there are apple trees in the game or else a partly-chopped tree is likely to give apples.  You will NOT always see the apples before they pop out.

Roter Apfel