Bags of apples have a very high percent mass loss when peeled and rotted parts cut off and served into apple pies or apple sauce or canned into brandied apples and are very small making a huge amount of labor to peel like ten mini apples per pound.

Individual apples are large and about can select externally flawless apples, and the surface area to volume scaling means for a given amount of finished product your compost pile will have maybe half the compost. Also the labor demand is immensely lower, it takes just as long to peel a baby apple from a bag that smaller than a baseball as it goes to peel a freakishly large individual apple thats bigger than a softball.

Solely on price per pound, bags of apples are mystifyingly cheaper than individual apples per pound, but in terms of final product and factoring in the labor annoyance of prep time, individual apples are often a much better deal.

I suppose much as there are people shocked that I find applesauce making and brandied apple canning fun and recreational and stress reducing, there probably exist people who are shocked that everyone doesn't find apple peeling and coring to be meditative and chill. For people who enjoy spending hours peeling tiny little apples, a 5 pound bag of little apples must be pure joy to them.