14 DAY TRIAL // According to an application submitted under ICANN's new gTLD program on January 31st 2015, Apple should take control of the .apple gTLD in the near future to help it better promote its products and services on the Internet.
gTLD is short for Generic Top Level Domain, and it is a domain name extension with three or more characters. ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) is the organization that manages the Internet's DNS, IP addresses, and ASNs.
As spotted by The Domains' Jamie Zoch, Apple just bought 29 .com domains on September 17, with the obvious intention to protect its future .apple domains from typographical mistakes.
The new domains, iLifeApple.com, LivePhotosApple.com, MacStoreApple.com, AppleCareApple.com being some of them, look weird if you wouldn't know about the .Apple gTLD application.
But, since Apple is expected to soon get control of their own gTLD, registering these 29 .com domains makes sense if we were to imagine them being used as a backup for when Apple customers might input the domain in the browser's address bar including the gTLD in the domain name.
The new .com domains are designed to act as a failsafe for future .apple domains
As any Internet user that has ever used a web browser knows, if you enter any domain in a browser's address bar, the browser will automatically try to append a gTLD to the domain, starting with .com.
Therefore, choosing to register this list of .com domains prior to taking control of their new gTLD is a clear sign the Apple will move some of its main website's sub-domains like for instance iTunes.apple.com to their new .Apple gTLD.
As described in Apple's original ICANN application: "Apple will have exclusive control over the proposed restricted .apple gTLD. Only Apple and its authorized, affiliated entities will be able to register second-level domains. Domain name registration agreements will incorporate all required ICANN policies."