...makes my head hurt when i try to do an apple to apple comparision with something like slushpool.
For every 1 apple you earn, slush would give you less than 0.98 apple and here you'd get 1 apple.

This is not what he is looking for.
Here he is going to receive his 1 apple after how many days working? This is also that we need to clarify for the really noobies (I am one of those)
EDIT:
I am saying this because I have 675 TH in antminers S9 (for me its a lot of money), I did a test with 4x at ckpool and I still did not received a penny for it. I know that some point I am going to receive, but at BTC.com pool I am receiving 0.0964532 per day....
I think CK pool can be more profitable, but I am still without knowing how.
EDIT 2:
This explanation from
http://give-me-coins.com/support/faq/what-is-pplns/ is a good one for the PPLNS method.
EDIT 3 : I need more help to understand why ck-pool is better than BTC.com (talking about profitability)