Absolutely, I love @apply for this reason. But just look at tailwind's website, they don't exactly present this front and center, so I read their site as though

Absolutely, I love @apply for this reason. But just look at tailwind's website, they don't exactly present this front and center, so I read their site as though they don't exactly prescribe the usage of @apply like you or I would. but tangentially to this, that's why I like tailwind, its really not all that prescriptive but a tool that speeds up my development un-equivocally more than Sass ever has.