Why should I use 'apply' in Clojure?

Question

This is what Rich Hickey said in one of the blog posts but I don\'t understand the motivation in using apply. Please help.

A big difference between Clojur

Answer 1

The usual pattern for apply type operations is to combine a function provided at runtime with a set of arguments, ditto.

I've not done enough with clojure to be able to be confident about the subtleties for that particular language to tell whether the use of apply in that case would be strictly necessary.