Funny story. Johnny Appleseed was famous for planting apple seeds across much of the U.S. But because his apples were grown from seed, they weren't hybrids and were probably all crabapples. And the only use for crabapples was making cider, so he was basically ensuring all these communities would have hard cider available when he came back to visit.
This is just a problem of lack of familiarity with the space. Crab apples are indeed much less palatable than Red Delicious apples.