Perhaps this use is to prevent trademark abandonment issues? I don’t think it’d be great for Apple if, e.g. Monoprice were to come out with a Macintosh computer.
This is a decent possibility, yeah. Other companies keep old trademarks active that way too.
"Standard Oil" in the US is one still used like that. It was split up between different companies for different states, and the current companies still use "Standard"/"Esso"/etc trademarks in obscure places to keep them active even though it's not part of their regular branding. I believe Chevron has a single gas station in each state named "Standard" although everything else looks like a Chevron station. Exxon sometimes labels their diesel pumps "Esso Diesel". At one point BP owned it in some states; I think they sold marine fuel on Lake Erie as "SOHIO" (Standard Oil of Ohio) still despite rebranding SOHIO stations in the late 80s everywhere else in the state. (This was several years ago that I remember seeing this, some things may have changed since then.)
(Outside of the US I think ExxonMobil owns it everywhere, and still regularly brands stations as Esso.)
