Depending on your socioeconomic status, the $12/year for a .com is either cheap or expensive, and while I hesitate to claim I'm disgusting wealthy (because I'm not) I, (I'm not the OP) at least rich enough to spend $12/year amongst other life's expenses. Having a custom domain name for a thing is a way of driving people to the domain, instead of focusing on yourself. It feels less self-aggrandizing to point at a project on its own domain name, rather than say hey, look at my blog which is branded with my name. What's important is the project, not me.

I appreciate it, I don't even own any iProducts but I find it interesting to see what phrases or words are considered for censorship from a mainstream mega corp.

Apparently it won't autocomplete cunning linguist, but it doesn't block master debater so half of that Austin powers joke (surely borrowed from an earlier comedian) will still autocomplete. Groovy baby yeah!

because a catchy domain seems to be 30% of marketing these days, and marketing seems to be 70% of success

But they're not selling anything? It just feels like a blog post.

They're selling themselves. This will go on their résumé.