Apple has adopted a .news domain name for its new “News” application / service which is a builtin feature of iOS9.
Apple.news points to the page on the Apple site with an overview of the new service:
For some bizarre reason they haven’t redirect the non-HTTPS traffic to the same place, so trying to type apple.news into a browser will leave you thinking that the domain does not work .. it does, just only over HTTPS.
The domain is also being used for shortening links to news stories in the app.
Rightside Registry, the publicly quoted company behind the .news domain extension, are obviously delighted to see such a high profile usage of a .news domain:
The take-away here is that there’s now a broad movement among leading brands, as well as the biggest companies in the world, toward these simple, yet powerful, branding tools called new domain extensions,” explains Taryn Naidu, Rightside’s CEO. “This is just the start, but Apple.NEWS is the most significant use of a new top-level domain (TLD) yet, and I am very excited at the promise and potential that this development signals. Whether they’re used as a complementary domain, content-sharing links (bit.ly, but with branding) or a simple re-direct, new domain extensions have a real and important place in every company’s overarching brand strategy today.
Personally I haven’t been able to get the .news app to work on my iPhone ..
UPDATE: If you are outside the US you need to switch the region of your iPhone (or iPad) to US in order to access the news app. It’s very similar to Flipboard, though that’s just my initial impression after 5 minutes of playing with it.
