That's probably right. A quick internet search shows up domains like applecoronavirus.com and similar, as well as this court case [1] where they acquired a bunch of ipod related names.
I suspect they are only parking those names after recovering them or buying them preemptively. Domain names are cheap, so why not. I don't think that's any argument for the possession of the /8 though.
I remember Google had ownership of duck.com until recently, so they probably participate in the wholesale acquisition of random domains as well [2].
All parked domains could lead to the same IP. A single web server could distinguish which domain it’s contacted for, using the HTTP headers for example, and serve different content (probably all 301-redirects, but to relevant other websites of Apple).
I suspect they are only parking those names after recovering them or buying them preemptively. Domain names are cheap, so why not. I don't think that's any argument for the possession of the /8 though.
I remember Google had ownership of duck.com until recently, so they probably participate in the wholesale acquisition of random domains as well [2].
[1]: https://techcrunch.com/2010/01/07/apple-domain-names/ [2]: https://www.theverge.com/2018/12/12/18137369/duckduckgo-duck...