Those apples sound like "Golden Delicious" which I believe we in the UK import from France. "I always thought it silly" - fair enough but these are very comple

Those apples sound like "Golden Delicious" which I believe we in the UK import from France. "I always thought it silly" - fair enough but these are very complex things when you look deeply. At the point of pick, the apple is now a self contained thing. It contains all sorts of chemicals, cells, structures and so on, contained within the skin. If you wax the skin then you might inhibit oxidation for a while (tends to make the flesh brown and sweeter) but the added wax means the skin is now not nice. Let's leave waxing for lemons. Temperature will affect most reactions but too cold will destroy fragile tissues, so let's keep things at roughly fridge temperature, so around 5degC. An apple is a very complex beast, sorry: fruit. There are sugars and an extremely complex cell structure to maintain. The thick skin will keep things stable for a short while but it's not enough. So you pick it unripe and delay those processes a bit.