I've often encountered a delay in transplanted pears leafing out- they suffer from the stress of transplanting more than any other species I grow. I wouldn't count on similar behavior from an apple.

I had a 4-year old pear that was bare root transplanted from light soil into a growbag this year that didn't leaf out as of 3 weeks ago (about mid-april would have been on schedule). I pulled it out of its bag to see if my helpers hadn't butchered the root system. They hadn't, so I drastically cut back branches and put back into moist soil and it leafed out a couple of days later.

Contrary to Carl Whitcomb's research, I believe that pears transplant better with hard pruning. A nurseryman that sells tens of thousands of pear trees to commercial growers steered me to this belief. He said that he'd seen entire new commercial pear orchards fail (in the south) because the bare root trees weren't pruned at planting.

Makes complete sense.

The pear I purchased was in a dirt ball thing and I didn't get it with the others from the orchard which all of those were bare roots. I figured the pear would have been the easiest to transplant since the roots didn't get disturbed, it said to keep the tree in the burlap. All the branches were sticking straight up. The branches are still weighed down since they aren't staying on their own still. Now to figure out how long its going to take until they stay where they need to be.