A cultivated variety: a breed of plant that is created or sustained by human activity, by propagation. In the case of apples, which do not breed true from seed, all such propagation is by grafting.
The reciprocal of apple cultivar, more or less, is the pippin, an apple variety grown from seed. In a sense all cultivars began as pippins. Those not preserved through cultivation become extinct at the death of the ungrafted tree.
Modern apple-breeding programs routinely destroy thousands of varieties for every new apple brought to cultivation. Arguably these rejects are cultivars too, though a short-lived. (If so, were they never pippins? Discuss.)