I just sent this note to Steve Jobs (or whoever reads/doesn't read his email):
Dear Mr. Jobs, Apple Web Engineers, or Whomever it May Concern,
It appears that your DNS settings are a bit off; it is currently required to type in www. before apple.com in order to see the Apple website. This is very bad form: not only is the www sub-domain antiquated, but users will likely get confused if they get a Safari can't open the page error when they try to navigate to apple.com without using the www.
Your DNS record for the www sub-domain points to one IP address, 17.251.200.32. Meanwhile, your apple.com domain points to another, 17.112.152.57.
I don't know how your intranet is set up, but keep in mind that if you test it from within Apple headquarters, this may not apply, as internally at Apple you may have your own DNS serves which may have the appropriate DNS settings.
I hope this notice reaches someone who can do something about the problem. I understand your web engineers are quite busy attempting to fix the problems surrounding MobileMe's launch, and I hope your problems will end soon.
And now, just as I finished typing this, you fixed it. Apple.com now redirects to www.apple.com.
Sorry for taking up your time,
Alex
P.S. I still think that www should not be required; if anything, www.apple.com should redirect to apple.com.
It really was down. But it appears they just added a redirect.
EDIT: The last couple days, it has again not been working for me. I am not sure if they have different DNS servers and I just keep getting the wrong ones, or if they just keep messing it up.
I still think www should be dropped. KILL www.
On that note, I am launching a web campaign. I am providing two pieces of media, if you care to use them and join me in the quest to KILL www. One is square, the other isn't. There's a handy tool called Photoshop (or Preview, on the Mac), that should allow you to resize the images if you need to.
Also, purely for interest's sake, I offer three example "good" sites, and three example "bad" sites: