Apple

Apples are food items which fill units of the hunger bar.

Obtaining
There are five sources of apples (excluding creative mode):
 * Oak and dark oak leaves have 0.5% ($1/200$) chance of dropping an apple. (approximately 25% chance to get an apple for an oak tree and 60% chance for a dark oak tree)
 * Chests in strongholds or villages.
 * The bonus chest.
 * Trading with villagers.
 * Killing Notch in multiplayer will drop an apple in addition to his inventory.
 * Note: This no longer works since at least Beta 1.7.3.

As a crafting ingredient
An apple can be used to craft a golden apple or an enchanted golden apple. These recipes don't work on Minecraft Pocket Edition (yet: Golden Apples may appear in later updates of MCPE.)

Pros

 * Apples are a renewable resource and can be harvested alongside wood.
 * While the player is harvesting wood, they receive apples with next to no added effort.
 * Apples are needed to craft golden apples, which are extremely beneficial food items.
 * Apples can be a good source of food when a player first starts in a new world, as it doesn't consume time planting seeds or killing mobs.

Cons

 * Apples restore only two hunger.
 * Players will become hungry again quickly compared to eating bread or meat due to a low saturation value.
 * Apples take more effort to farm than other foods, and should generally be considered a by-product of wood harvesting.
 * Apples can be an unreliable food source, as even large trees may occasionally drop no apples.
 * Also, farming apples as food requires chopping the wood, then waiting for the leaves to decay on their own: On average, breaking 200 leaf blocks will use 5 food units, to produce one apple that only gives 4 units when eaten.

Trivia

 * The sprite of red apples was the same as used in Notch's game Legend of the Chambered.
 * In Pocket Edition there is a higher chance of getting apples from decaying leaves.