On second thought - you had the right picture. It's got nice focus and color. Just that desaturating the right and left fruit is too mundane - mostly becaues those two items have very little contrast and the white background isn't adding anything to your picture. The red apple is already dead center and the focus of attention - sure, desaturating the right and left diid help him, but, only a little. The picture is still a little bland. I would have alternated the shadow colors and fruit colors. Desat the left apple and leave the shadow in color, color the center, desat it's shadow, and on the right leave the apple desat and add the color. A background of sliced and desaturated apples would have added allot to this rather than a blank white background too.
Interesting. You must have used green apples on the ends? I like the idea a lot but it isn't balanced or as crisp as I would like to see it. I would like to have all the apples even across the bottom as it is now, it is about a half degree off. Nice white background and I find it intreesting how your red apple also has a colored background. I'm going to try to duplicate that.