Hm. @apply solves a problem. Basically you’re better off writing with the utility classes if you can extract your component out to… well, a component. If for whatever reason you can’t do that, @apply helps you avoid repeating yourself, which seems to be a reasonably good alternative to what’s in TFA.

But there are other (better) options available in most circumstances. Tailwind actually have a pretty good write up here:

https://tailwindcss.com/docs/reusing-styles

That said, it’s easy to come up with a ‘gist’ like

> The semantic version is 8 × smaller, renders faster, and is easier to modify and extend.

but then underneath say you’re not minifying, and you’re not publishing the source code… it’s almost like the author had the conclusion before starting to experiment.