Re: cultivars. Some have probably died out. Others have probably gotten better. Look at apples; my parents talk about how the only apples they had were red delicious and granny smith. Now we have insane diversity of delicious apples without even having to grow them ourselves.
I traveled through a town in California known for it's apple orchards. There, I ate a 'Hawkeye' apple, which was said to be an ancestor of the 'Red Delicious'.
The 'Hawkeye' isn't my new favorite, but was good enough to appreciate how much it's shameful descendent had dishonored the name of this otherwise respectable apple family.
The Red Delicious was made not for taste, but for durability: it has exceptionally long shelf life, so it's excellent for shipping to far-away places, including overseas, and it doesn't require refrigeration.
Most likely, the ancestor doesn't keep or ship that well.
There's a reason no one who actually likes apples buys Red Delicious these days; they buy one of the better varieties like Gala or Fuji or Honeycrisp or many others. Red Delicious still sell in huge quantities in the US, though, mainly to institutions like schools and hospitals. When the person selecting your meal cares more about cost than taste, you get Red Delicious.
Also, Americans throughout much of the 20th century had very poor culinary tastes. That only started changing in the 1980s, and got much better by the 2000s. So for a long time, Americans were perfectly happy to eat the nasty Red Delicious apples.
And you can still get Hawkeye. In fact, you can probably look up and find hundreds of heirloom apple types, pick any three at random, and go get them within a few days if they're in season.
