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I recently bought some apples and the term was written in hiragana.
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kanji orthography hiragana jōyō-kanji
Why is りんご written in hiragana?
A lot of words that have kanji are still written in kana, probably because
people overall simply don't bother to learn all the kanji. There certainly
isn't any need for it. As for the kanji, 林檎, I can't remember ever having seen
it other than in dictionaries.
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2017-03-19T12:36:35.093
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There is a lot of examples of words in Japanese that are written using kana
alone, rather than Kanji, even though they could be written in Kanji. They are
mostly words so common and used, that people just find it easier to use
Hiragana (a classical example would be きょう （今日）which is almost always written
in Hiragana. Ironically, the more you know Kanji, the more confusing it gets
to read words in Hiragana if they could be written in Kanji you already know.
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2017-03-19T12:41:27.197
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In kanji りんご is 林檎, but as you may know 檎 is not a general-use kanji (常用漢字)
thus it is not taught in school and is not supposed to appear in official
writings. That is the reason why you will never see 林檎 in kanji outside of
dictionaries or books that does not bother with 常用漢字.
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2017-03-19T12:43:47.107
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りんご can be written in _kanji_ as 林檎. However, the second _kanji_ is not a
_jōyō kanji_ , so the whole word is often written in _kana_.

The same happens with hundreds of other everyday items

  * みかん 蜜柑
  * しょうゆ 醤油
  * みそ 味噌
  * ろうそく 蝋燭
  * にんじん 人参
  * タンス 箪笥
  * ネジ 螺子
  * ...
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