It seems to me that "can't compare apples and oranges" is trying to say that you're using apple criteria to try to judge oranges. It's not that you can't compare apples and oranges, but you have to use fruit criteria to do so, not apple criteria or orange criteria.
So, to stop using similes: You can compare CPUs. You can compare memory chips. You can also compare memory chips and CPUs on, say, power consumption. But you can't compare memory chips to CPUs in terms of MIPS. If you try, then it's appropriate to accuse you of comparing apples to oranges.
Good point. If things exist in different "ontological categories" trying to evaluate which of them is "better" makes little sense.
But apples and oranges are both good food, so we can compare how much calories you get forjm them, or vitamins etc.
I think oranges and citrus generally is a weird variable because it’s hard to grow outside of tropical climates or advanced techniques:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orangery
> In England, John Parkinson introduced the orangery to the readers of his Paradisus in Sole (1628), under the heading "Oranges". The trees might be planted against a brick wall and enclosed in winter with a plank shed covered with "cerecloth", a waxed precursor of tarpaulin, which must have been thought handsomer than the alternative:
> > For that purpose, some keep them in great square boxes, and lift them to and fro by iron hooks on the sides, or cause them to be rowled by trundels, or small wheeles under them, to place them in a house or close gallery.
So apples and oranges aren’t equally Veblen goods, which is another wrinkle. Apples can grow nearly anywhere, and do.
More context here:
https://www.gardenhistorygirl.co.uk/post/the-juicy-tale-of-t... | https://archive.is/l580N
Specific citrus fruits are sacred:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Etrog
I’ve never heard of apples being special outside of the Garden of Eden.
Interesting caption from that next to last link that perhaps goes against my point but is relevant to apples versus oranges comparisons:
> 'Hesperides' by Giovanni Battista Ferrari published in Rome,1646. Its full title meaning 'Hesperides, or, On the cultivation and use of the golden apple' (golden apples referring to citrus fruit)