swampcat,
Here's a good chart about cedar apple rust and tree varieties.
Planted liberty, enterprise, and granny smith for cedar apple rust resistance. Thought Freedom would be resistant, but seeing a bit on thgat tree, nothing too bad. Droptine has a little bit of rust on it too. Got to double check my golden delicious, that get rust from what I read. My grafted rthis year kerr's don't have a any on them. Tent catepillars and cedar apple rust didn't touch my crossbow from whitetail crabs. Giving that tree a shot on antovoka up in the adirondacks zone 3 this fall. Got one in a growpot.
MY early fruit tree is pristine. They say it's good to zone 9. Granny smith is another hot area tree too. Pristine is somewhat suspectible to cedar apple rust. But, cedar apple rust is not a death sentence for a tree. Other disease can be worse on trees.
Cedar apple rust is an issue for commercial fruit growers. It does make fruit ugly. Blemish free apples get much more money than ones you have to use only for sauce or cider. Spots on the leaves do reduce that capability of a tree somewhat. If there's a tree you want and it is suspectible to cedar apple rust, it's worth trying. Highly suspectible might not be worth it. I have tree fro wildlife and tree in my backyard for me and the deer. The backyard ones will get sprayed and watered well. The ones up at camp, I do what I can when I am there.
There's a commercial orchard about a 1/2 mile from my house. They let their orchards go fallow for about 2 or 3 years after removing trees. They have a irrigation pond with cedars all around it, kinda interesting they dont bother to chop them down. I propogate cedar trees in my front yard as a privacy screen. I have a shallow soil base there ontop of shale. I do pick the orange octopuses off of them and bag then to go in the garbage.