Top 10 Domains Owned by Apple in 2022: Apple.com, Next.com, and More…

In August 2020, Apple became the world’s $2 trillion company after its share price hit $467.77 on that day. Synonymous with the tech industry, Apple’s rise was spearheaded by co-founder Steve Jobs, and later by CEO Tim Cook.

As you might expect, Apple owns some incredible domain names. Here are some of the top names owned by Apple.

 

Apple.com

Naturally, we start with Apple.com. The 64th-oldest domain name in existence, Apple.com, was registered in 1987 and has been the digital contact point for the brand for decades. According to SimilarWeb, Apple.com received around 508 million visitors in December 2020. 

While Apple has owned Apple.com for an eternity, Apple only acquired the British Apple.co.uk domain in 2012.

 

Me.com

Me.com held Apple’s precursor to iCloud in the form of MobileMe, a collection of online services that was created in 2008. Apple opted to acquire the Me.com domain for the project, with MacWorld reporting that the company acquired the name from a social networking company. 

NameBio lists Me.com as selling for $460,000 in 2005, but Apple’s purchase price is unknown.

 

Carbon.com

According to Wikipedia, is one of Apple’s C-based APIs for macOS and was an important part of Apple’s strategy for bringing Mac OS X to market. Introduced in 2000, Carbon’s tenure spanned twelve years and was considered deprecated with the release of OSX 10.8 Mountain Lion. Apple still owns the Carbon.com name, though, and it currently redirects to Apple.com.

 

Next.com

Being from the UK, my association with the brand name “Next” is the British highstreet fashion chain, Next. For Apple fans, the word “next’ likely triggers memories of Steve Jobs’ NeXT, the company that he created after being infamously forced out of Apple in the 80s. 

In 1996, Apple acquired NeXT, bringing Steve Jobs back to Apple, and bringing the Next.com domain name with him.

 

Airport.com

Airport, stylized as AirPort, was an Apple product that was introduced in 1999 that served as a wifi router and expanded to a range of products such as the AirPort Time Capsule. As with many products and services in the late 90s and early 2000s, Apple acquired the exact-match .COM for it. 

Although AirPort was officially discontinued in 2018, Apple still owns Airport.com.

 

Newton.com

The name Newton is synonymous with the English physicist Sir Isaac Newton, regarded as one of the most influential scientists of all time. Because Apple’s original logo contained a drawing of Sir Isaac Newton sitting under an apple tree, the manager of the new handheld device project decided to name the project Newton. Thus, the Apple Newton PDA was born. 

Again, Apple acquired the exact-match .COM for the product name and continue to hold the domain to this day.

 

Catch.com

I can think of several domain name companies that would love to own this name, but I suspect it would be difficult to prise Catch.com from Apple’s hands. Catch.com was a service for note-taking on iOS and Android devices that was founded in 2008. 

Apple acquired Catch.com’s service and domain name in 2013 and promptly shut the service down. 

 

Mac.com

The word “mac” is now synonymous with Apple. From the Apple Mac to the MacBook to the iMac and MacOS, Apple’s history with “mac” goes back to the 1979 when employee Jef Raskin wanted to name Apple’s new computer after his favorite type of apple, the McIntosh. The spelling was renamed to Macintosh for legal reasons and later shortened to Mac.

Mac.com forwards users to Apple’s web page promoting its line of Mac computers.

 

Texture.com

Texture is, I think, a lovely brand name and Texture.com is an equally pleasing domain. Texture was a digital magazine app that launched in 2012 that gave users access to hundreds of magazines in exchange for a monthly subscription. 

By March 2018, Apple had agreed to buy Texture for an undisclosed sum, and the service transitioned into Apple News+. Texture.com, previously owned by Texture, was transferred to Apple and now redirects visitors to Apple News+’s information page. 

 

Mog.com

Another three-letter .COM owned by Apple is Mog.com. Although less valuable to the brand than Mac.com, Mog.com as a name holds significant value. Beats Electronics acquired Mog, a former online music service and blog network, in 2012.

The name then moved into Apple’s possession after Apple acquired Beats Electronics in a $3 billion deal.

 

With all of these highly valuable domains, you may be wondering whether Apple ever sells any of their names. That has happened, according to WHOIS data. DomainIQ shows that in 2016, Grail.com transferred from Apple’s possession to a privacy-protected account. The name now hosts the website of GRAIL, a healthcare company.