Thank you for the detailed explanation xcthulhu! Your response has helped to clear up some of my confussion with apply().

In the comments for this post on SO, SLaks explanation of [] versus Array.prototype was:

"[] is shorter, but it creates an extra array instance. Array.prototype is longer but faster."

I'm not sure if that's correct, so maybe somoene here can verify that is the case and provide a citation to documentation that indicates the veracity of the statement.