A fruit press is more or less necessary if you want to make wine/cider from fruit such as apples or pears (or any berries for that matter). At least if you want to make any quantity. There are a few types - spindle presses such as the ones here and cross beam presses. Before you press your fruit, it needs cutting up in smaller bits, or crushing. The serious home brewer can of course buy a fruit crusher for this purpose. Full details including BB fruit press instructions can be found here: Fruit presses

Fruit crushers are used to prepare the raw materials for your fermentation into wine or cider. If you want to extract the juice from apples, pears or any other fruit or berries, you will need a fruit press. However, in order to press the fruit, you need to crush it first. The manual alternative is to cut your apples in small slices before attempting to press them, but that is very time consuming so you can buy a special crusher to do the job. Full details including BB fruit crusher instructions can be found here: Crushers (fruit, malt)