There are many ways to preserve apples even without refrigeration (sauces, jams, jellies, juices, canned slices, dehydrated, ...). Also the right varieties of apples ("winter apples") store fine for months, some in excess of a year, in a cool and damp cellar. Hell they have rather fallen out of favour but there are actually varieties which must be aged before being any good, they're close to inedible off the tree (if you have access to a heirloom distributor's listings, look for varieties where both harvest and consumption times are listed, they're usually months apart).

And the average cooking or dessert apples doesn't make for great cider. While sugar is important (and cider apples can have more than dessert or cooking apples), tanins, acidity, and phenols are also very useful to cidermaking even though they make the apples themselves rather unpalatable.