[plt-scheme] apply vs dot notation syntax

Hi all,

Probably it was discussed ages ago but could not find any links
regarding the following question.
Why scheme has 'apply' primitive instead of simple dot
notation ? i.e. we can use

(f arg1 arg2 . rest-of-args-list)

instead of standard:

(apply f arg1 arg2 rest-of-args-list)

The former looks similar to the 'define' syntax
and has advantage to be processed by a compiler
in some special way. For example, optimizer can remove
some unused arguments. Doing the same optimization with
standard approach looks unnatural from the compiler design
perspective : compiler [lower layer] should know about function 
primitives [higher level].

Thanks.

--
Bohdan