Your analogy with the apples is an oversimplification of what is going on that misses an important aspect of the system: the measurements aren't independent. The type of measurement you do effect the result of the measurement your friend does.
If you leave out the properties that are special about entangled systems from the analogy, it can't shed any light on entangled systems.
I have yet to see a single physics analogy that covers every single aspect of the physics without being misleading. If the maths is easy enough to follow without needing an analogy, you just get the maths.
The problem with doing this is that getting an extra graduate degree is a lot of work.
Of these, the only one I did in my double maths A-level was matricies and partial differential equations of single dimensional real functions, and the absolute basics of what complex numbers are.
Seems like it needs a degree to me, having tried to teach myself using brilliant.org