I just thought that, as adept and talented as my daughter undoubtedly is, the apple might prove her undoing... and it did. The poor wee thing gagged and choked and I was forced to do the old slappy-back thing (at the same time hopelessly aware that she was sitting in a restaurant high chair that we had practically lashed her into and that if we were ultimately required to tip her upside down we would probably have to do so by turning the entire chair over...)
I had cut it into segments, and she was really enjoying the taste and the sensation of it, but a piece broke off that was too tricky for her to handle and there were tears... (mostly mine).
Think we'll give the apples a miss until she has some top teeth and I can just hand her the whole thing to scrape on.
Post Script
Still no sign of the top teeth but at nine months old Babybear now enjoys eating her apples whole. I wouldn't have started her any earlier, thanks to our choking experience, but what I do is bite a good chunk out of and hand it to her so that she can use her bottom teeth to grate away at the open part of the apple. Very, very handy to take out with you as it is a huge time-waster, and it is rather sociable, I find, to share an apple with your child. Especially when I get to eat 90% of it.