To me (native English a la USA) apples are in a sort of uncanny valley between things that could in fact be measured by the physical handful, like peanuts, and things that couldn't -- buildings being way off the charts, obviously.
"There are a handful of apples" is a different usage, which people will accept.
(Maybe better described as feral apples? Old orchards with trees unpruned for decades.)
https://www.google.com/search?q=beach+apple&source=lnms&tbm=...
Now those are fighting words. "A few" is obviously 3-5, six in a dire emergency.
E.g. for grains of rice, even 23 or so of them could still constitute "a few grains stuck to the sides of the bowl."
Similarly, in databases, "a few rows" is any amount that's not Big Data ;)
https://twitter.com/jimmykimmel/status/327276064009240577?la...