In my view, the applications are the strength of the text and the reasons why I use this particular text. The students like them too and often comment on them in class.
My overall opinion of the text is that is does a good job of addressing the concepts that I would like to see in an intermediate level text. I primarily like the way the text begins with a discussion of what economic models are, and then flows into the various models from there.
My overall impression is that Nicholson is the best text in the field. There are two themes in Nicholson. First, the text is a study of how economists study markets and, second, the text uses many applications to show the usefulness of the theory. He gets to the essential theory without elegant mathematical models. All of this is in keeping with my approach to the course.