On Wednesday MacRumors’ Eric Slivka broke the news that Apple has notified resellers in its educational institution distribution channel that the white polycarbonate MacBook is now classified “End of Life.”

Direct sales of the white MacBook to general consumers were terminated last July with the release of the Sandy Bridge Core i powered refresh of the MacBook Air, at which time the 11.6″ Air took sole possession of the $999 price point it had theretofore shared with the MacBook. However, the MacBook continued to be available to educational institutions with its price reduced to $899.

First introduced in May 2006, plastic-bodied MacBooks replaced the G4 powered iBook in Apple’s changeover to Intel silicon, and was initially available in both white and black polycarbonate livery, the latter at a $200 price premium. There was also a short-lived aluminum unibody MacBook released in October, 2008, which morphed into the 13″ MacBook Pro at its first refresh in May, 2009. The plastic-bodied MacBook received a major redesign in mid-2010 with a new polycarbonate housing, also of nominally “unibody” design.

It is speculated that production of the white Apple ceased production of the MacBook some time ago, and has finally exhausted its stock of the model. Apple is expected to ramp up its focus on the iPad as an education computer platform, in conjunction with its new venture into the ebook textbook publishing and distribution market.

It’s unlikely that the white MacBook will be greatly missed. The iPad is a more economical solution for education users, and the MacBook Air is a more than worthy replacement for those who continue to prefer a clamshell laptop form factor. However, the MacBook’s termination does mark the end of the era of plastic-bodied Apple notebooks, which extends back to the original PowerBook 100 in 1991.

The username/password dump has been verified as legitimate, and the hacking has caused Foxconn to close off access to the affected servers. While the login dumps are certainly significant, it is currently unclear as to whether any other sensitive data has been leaked as a result of this. You can read SwaggSec’s full public statement regarding the incident below:

/* Don’t Wanna Read? No problem skip to end. */

______ ______
/ _____) / _____)
( (____ _ _ _ _____ ____ ____( (____ _____ ____
\____ \| | | (____ |/ _ |/ _ |\____ \| ___ |/ ___)
_____) ) | | / ___ ( (_| ( (_| |_____) ) ____( (___
(______/ \___/\_____|\___ |\___ (______/|_____)\____)
(_____(_____|

## Hacking Today for an Entertaining Tomorrow.

Users of Cyberspace,

So Foxconn thinks they got ‘em some swagger because they work with the Big Boys from Intel, Microsoft, IBM, and Apple? Fool, You don’t know what swagger is. They say you got your employees all worked up, committing suicide ‘n stuff. They say you hire chinese workers ’cause you think the taiwanese are elite. We got somethin’ served up good…real good. Your not gonna’ know what hit you by the time you finish this release. Your company gonna’ crumble, and you deserve it.

Upon switching the radio from Nicki Minaj’s self-enforcing, lack of content, stereotypical song, “Stupid Hoe”; We switched on BBC Radio, the leading source of unbiased material. A short segment on the manufacturer giant Foxconn, came up reporting on the inhuman conditions the workers experience. A few days later an almost viral rumor about an Iphone 5 with a 4-inch screen being manufactured, as claimed by an employee from the infamous Foxconn. Now as a first impression Swagg Security would rather not deceive the public of our intentions. Although we are considerably disappointed of the conditions of Foxconn, we are not hacking a corporation for such a reason and although we are slightly interested in the existence of an Iphone 5, we are not hacking for this reason. We hack for the cyberspace who share a few common viewpoints and philosophies. We enjoy exposing governments and corporations, but the more prominent reason, is the hilarity that ensues when compromising and destroying an infrastructure. How unethical right? Perhaps for the layman who has conformed to a society raised by the government that actively seeks to maintain power and quell threats to their ventures. But to us and many others, the destruction of an infrastructure, the act of destruction that does not affect an individual, brings a sense of newfound content, a unique feeling, along with a new chance to start your own venture.
This is Swagg Security, we aim to to reshape your perspectives, our perspectives, by the inducing of entertainment. A unique approach to spreading a unique philosophy which brings the sought after tranquility. In a way we are “hacktivist”, but in our own views we are Greyhats. We believe there is no reality in hacktivism, even with good intentions. We know those who claim to be “hacktivists” that inside of you, a suppressed part of you, enjoys playing a part in the anarchist event of hacking of an infrastructure. One which at the same time presents a challenge, upon completing reveals an almost unknown feeling of a menacing satisfaction. We encourage not to continue quelling such a natural emotion but to embrace it. Only when embracing what society has taught you to hinder, is when you realize your own identity.

We encourage media, security experts, and other interested individuals to explore our leaks. Foxconn did have an appropriate firewall, but fortunately to our intent, we were able to bypass it almost flawlessly. Of course with funding ourselves we did have our limitations. But with several hacking techniques employed, and a couple of days in time, we were able to dump most of everything of significance. We now appropriately give consent to other individuals reading this release, to scavenge through the leaks acquiring usernames and passwords; while attempting to find if they use the passwords anywhere else. Remember damage is bliss. Without further undue, the leaks.

The Hackers with Swagger,
Swagg Security

Note: The passwords inside these files could allow individuals to make fraudulent orders under big companies like Microsoft, Apple, IBM, Intel, and Dell. Be careful ; )

Torrent to Foxconn Leak and Dump(Please Seed):
-:- http://thepiratebay.se/torrent/7016541/Foxconn_Leaked___-_Swagg_Security_- -:-

http://twitter.com/SwaggSec

Via [9to5 Mac]

Tweetbot 2.0 boasts new features such as inline image previews, opening links within the app, Readability integration, and UI improvements. Tweetbot for iPad includes all of the iPhone/iPod touch app’s features with a beautiful yet simple interface to match.

Both Tweetbot versions are available on the App Store now for $2.99 each.

Product [Tweetbot]

Consider it a tough day when you sneeze so hard that your very soul is hurled out of your body. Consider it even tougher when you learn the only way to get it back is to scare the various citizens of Monster Town. Sound like a fun game concept? It is, but that’s not this game. That’s Gabrielle’s Ghostly Groove for Nintendo 3DS. This is Gabrielle’s Monster Match for iOS, a universal app match-style game that manages to retain the charm of its predecessor despite its more basic gameplay.

What is it?

Gabrielle’s Monster Match is another grid-based tapping game where you try to line up various icons in rows or columns of four to make them disappear. Unlike most games of this ilk, however, the board starts out largely empty here, with four more icons added each time you don’t set up a match. When the board fills up completely (or time runs out), you lose.

How does it work?

At the beginning of each level, you’re given your task: get a 2x combo in 60 seconds, remove seven icons at once in 90s seconds, etc. Some of the tasks can be quite difficult, while others are easily overcome, but all require a certain degree of strategy. You can move the icons pretty much anywhere on the screen provided the launch and/or landing squares are not blocked off.

To the right of the main grid is a column that shows the next four icons to hit the screen. Although you don’t know where on the grid they’ll land, you’ll at least know what they will be and can plan accordingly. If you manage to line up four similar icons, they will clear off and you’ll get to go again without having four more icons dumped on the grid. It’s therefore best to not focus on just one icon at a time. The more open you can be with your strategy, the longer you’ll be able to keep the board open.

Is it contagious?

Gabrielle’s Monster Match is cute fun, yes. The three game modes—Time Trial, Quest and Endless—will keep you playing after you’ve completed all the levels (only five of which are available in the free version). Although Monster Match doesn’t do much to further Gabrielle’s character or endear her to the player (you learn about her only through storybook pages that are unlocked as you complete levels), the charm of the design and music is carried through.

Fans of Gabrielle should enjoy the trip back to the familiar faces of Monster Town, even if the gameplay is radically different from its rhythm based predecessor. But you needn’t have any idea of who Gabrielle is to have fun with Monster Match. The puzzles are varied enough to keep things interesting, and challenging enough to make you feel rewarded upon completion.

Oh, but one boneheaded thing about the game; the ads remain even after you’ve paid for the full version. Not cool, Natsume…not cool at all.

Category: Puzzle/arcade game
Developer: Natsume, Inc.
Cost: Free – first five levels; $0.99 – full game
Download: Gabrielle’s Monster Match

Feral Interactive is once again letting it be known that when Mac gamers fight, there are no skirmishes or police actions. For us, it’s war—Total War—as evidenced by the announced that Empire: Total War Gold Edition will be launched for the Mac this spring.

Developed by The Creative Assembly, Empire: Total War Gold Edition sets the acclaimed series’ real-time tactics and turn-based strategy gameplay elements in the 18th century. The Industrial Revolution, America’s struggle for independence, the race to control Asian trade routes, and the globalization of war on land and sea all factor into the players’ fortunes as they build a nation into a dominant world power.

Players command entire fleets in real-time naval combat amid dynamic water and weather effects, where mastery of their vessels makes the difference between glorious victory and humiliating defeat. Ground warfare has also changed, with the arrival of gunpowder, muskets and accurate artillery. To triumph in this radically different environment, players must learn new formations and master new tactics.

The Mac version of Empire: Total War Gold Edition comprises the base game Empire: Total War and all the game updates, improvements and downloadable content, including The Warpath Campaign, where players take command of one of five new Native American factions, defending their lands from invaders. It also includes four unit packs, the Special Forces Units and the Elite Units of the East, West and America.

Pricing and system requirements for Empire: Total War Gold Edition have not yet been announced, but a mini-site dedicated to the game is now online.

Product [Empire: Total War Gold Edition]

Dave Morin, CEO of Path, has apologized today for his company’s actions in this matter, and assured users within his apology that Path is committed to protecting its users’ privacy.

Morin’s statement on the issue follows:

We made a mistake. Over the last couple of days users brought to light an issue concerning how we handle your personal information on Path, specifically the transmission and storage of your phone contacts. As our mission is to build the world’s first personal network, a trusted place for you to journal and share life with close friends and family, we take the storage and transmission of your personal information very, very seriously.

Path fixed the privacy concern behind this through an update to its iOS app, which is now available in the App Store, bringing Path up to version 2.0.6. This update allows users to opt-in or opt-out of having their address book contact information stored on Path’s servers, and gives users the ability to opt-out later by emailing the company at service@path.com and asking them to remove the data from their servers. All address book contact information that had been stored prior to this update has also been erased from Path’s servers, so you can be assured your data is no longer in their hands unless you opt-in upon launching the new Path version.

Via [9to5 Mac]

Mass Effect Infiltrator will give players an increased “Galactic Readiness rating,” an element used in the game’s “Galaxy at War” system which ties into the console’s multiplayer component. Playing the iOS tie-in will also allow players the chance to earn exclusive weaponry, another reason Mass Effect 3 fans should purchase the iOS tie-in.

Mass Effect Infiltrator should be available on the App Store very soon, as Mass Effect 3 is just about a month away from release.

Via [TUAW]

Valentine’s Day is not my favorite holiday. I imagine it’s the same with many of you, for various reasons. My big one is that the movies are generally pretty boring…but it doesn’t have to be that way. If all your significant other wants for a Valentine’s Day movie is romance, you can get that in pretty much any kind of movie—even most Godzilla movies have romantic elements, after all (at the end of Godzilla vs. Megalon, for example, Godzilla shakes Jet Jaguar’s hand for an uncomfortably long time).

So, when you hear the words “Let’s watch something romantic tonight,” you can steer clear of anything with Renee Zellweger or Reese Witherspoon in it and instead take these suggestions from the hopeless romantics here at Appletell. All the movies recommended are available for rental at purchase from iTunes.

David: Wall-E

Boy-bot meets girl-bot, girl-bot tries to atomize boy-bot with screaming laser death, boy-bot displays undying devotion, girl-bot’s processor undergoes quantum inversion. I know, it happens all the time, but it still gets me right in the CPU.

So, it’s an animated flick about a trash compactor and his mission to tidy up the planet, but the humanity is still there for all to see. Besides, who wouldn’t want a girlfriend who can shoot energy bolts from her arm? Think of the possibilities for the commute to work! Wall-E has the classic elements of a romantic comedy: a hero and his love interest, unrequited affection, apparently insurmountable differences in purpose and station in life, a little bit of playful poking at one’s flaws, and recognition and appreciation of each other in the end.

Wall-E doesn’t have a lot of dialogue, but it isn’t necessary when the message is so clearly and artfully delivered. Do we really need dialogue when we get a visual of Wall-E holding an umbrella in a thunderstorm so EVE, who is inactive at the moment, doesn’t get wet? So, the lightning strike was a bit Caddy Shack, but that doesn’t stop it from being funny and touching at the same time. We have all known people who will quietly sacrifice even if the focus of devotion doesn’t realize it. But before you get all misty-eyed, don’t forget you also get some laughs as well. Think about the poor Burn-E who just wants to fix the running light and can’t seem to win for losing. You get the laughs you need to say, “Yes, I have been entertained.”

Buy or rent Wall-E

Erica: Independence Day

Not only do you have the Earth under attack by aliens with a ragtag group of misfits being the only thing standing between survival and destruction, but you also have three romances. These romantic stories have a similar theme; one person didn’t appreciate the other, and instead wanted them to be what they considered the “perfect spouse.” In the end, they realized they were the ones who needed to change to truly appreciate the other person’s worth.

With plenty of comedy, action and romance, it’s a movie the entire family can watch together.

Buy or rent Independence Day

Aaron: The Abyss

A disappearing nuclear submarine, a threat from the Soviets, encounters with a mysterious alien life form, and an intentional drowning hardly sound like the recipe for a romantic movie, but The Abyss somehow manages to weave the redemption story of a tough oil platform captain and his estranged wife into a believable melodrama set against a sci-fi background.

If I’m going to watch a film with heavy overtones of “why-can’t-we-all-get-along,” there needs to be a believable love story (The Abyss was released in 1989 just as the Cold War was nearing its end). The combination of Ed Harris and Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio as the estranged Bud and Dr. Lindsey Brigman make the overarching theme of a watchful alien presence work by reflecting a microcosmic view of the tensions present in the world. The he said / she said of their relationship and ultimate redemption holds a mirror up to the ultimately petty squabbles of the human race at large. As a bonus, there are plenty of sci-fi thrills along the way, like a perfluorocarbon liquid breathing experiment.

The Abyss features some fine examples of early computer animated imagery from Industrial Light & Magic, with pioneering animation techniques including digitization of human characters’ faces for the scene when the alien pseudopod performs some doppelgänger tricks. More importantly, the movie features one of the most violent true-love scenes when Mary Elizabeth Matrantonio voluntarily sacrifices herself to drowning and Ed Harris goes to great lengths to revive her (hilariously parodied in the NSFW South Park Imaginationland).

For those of you with absolutely no interest in sappy, chick-flick style love, this is about as macho as it gets.

Buy or rent The Abyss

Bill: Casino Royale

If there’s anything women love, it’s a tormented man who’s also extremely handsome. If there’s anything guys love, it’s watching two guys beat the crap out of each other. Casino Royale (2006) makes good use of both meanings of the word “tortured” as it reboots the Bond franchise and amazingly manages to make an action film that appeals to both men and women. This is one of the favorite films of my marriage because, as my wife says, “I always have time for Daniel Craig.”

Bond starts the film as an aloof jerk that all the chicks dig, using women and throwing them away because he realizes that in his line of work, he could be dead tomorrow. Also, he’s a bit of a sociopath; when a woman he used for information is tortured and killed, it doesn’t bother him in the slightest. But since he walked out of the ocean wearing tiny, tiny swim trunks about 15 minutes earlier, you’re willing to forgive him. Enter Eva Green as Vesper Lind, the gorgeous woman who will go through hell with Bond, win his heart, but eventually betray him. The actual plot of the film—Bond must beat a terrorism funding criminal mastermind in a high stakes game of poker—is almost completely unimportant as you watch the tempestuous relationship of Craig and Green play out on the screen.

It being a Bond film, there are also car chases and gunfights galore. But Casino Royale takes a big step back from the invisible cars and magnetic watches of previous films; every battle here is brutal, visceral, and very, very personal. This isn’t a Bond who makes a quip after shooting a henchman, but one who strangles with his bare hands then stares at the corpse to make sure he’s dead. None of the battles is more intense, however, than the confrontation where Bond is tied naked to a chair and beaten with a rope. Nobody in modern film takes a beating like Daniel Craig, who still manages to joke his way through the extremely dark film.

And the fact that he’s naked during it doesn’t hurt, in my wife’s point of view.

Buy or rent Casino Royale

Kirk: Corpse Bride

My first inclination here was to go with Dark City, simply because I’m always looking for a reason to recommend that to people. But it’s…well…dark, and has a couple dead hookers in it. That’s a pretty hard sale. So, instead, let’s go with dead puppets.

Corpse Bride is a stop-motion animation pseudo-musical along the lines of The Nightmare Before Christmas. Set in a dreary 19th century Europe, we follow along with Victor (Johnny Depp) and his pending marriage to Victoria (Emily Watson). Although the wedding is arranged by their parents for financial reasons, the two actually fall instantly in love; but a series of mishaps finds Victor accidentally proposing to the wrong woman. The main problem here is that she’s dead, but that doesn’t prevent her form accepting.

The corpse bride steals Victor down to the underworld (which is, of course, much more lively and colorful than the world of the living) with full intent of becoming his wife. In what may be my second favorite cinematic musical number ever, we learn that the corpse bride got the name because she was murdered on the night she was to elope with her true love. Meanwhile, a new suitor for Victoria has appeared above, and the corpse bride below is actually quite friendly and pretty, anyway. Is Victoria better off above without Victor? Is Victor willing to make the ultimate sacrifice to give the corpse bride the husband she always wanted?

The movie is graced with a wonderful cast featuring Tracey Ullman, Richard Grant, Christopher Lee, Michael Gough, Joanna Lumley, Albert Finney and others, including, of course, Deep Roy, who even in animation has to play someone very short. This is a Tim Burton film, after all.

Corpse Bride is lively, colorful, and quite funny, and features some of Danny Elfman’s best post-Oingo Boingo music. More importantly, it cleverly honors the sacrifices we’re willing to make for the ones we love…living or dead.

Buy or rent Corpse Bride

Be sure to give us your suggestions in the comment area below (especially if that suggestion is Dark City), and have a wonderful Valentine’s Day!

Also see: Appletell staff picks: Romantic movies for Valentine’s Day

As the MacBook Air and MacBook Pro models live on, no other portable Mac models have taken over the MacBook’s spot. However, it seems Apple has replaced the need for a MacBook with its other portable products: iDevices, particularly the iPad. As the old MacBook was meant as a solution for students more than anything, the iPad has replaced it in that area. The iPad offers many advantages for students that even the white, plastic MacBook couldn’t provide, such as ultra portability.

The MacBook was originally introduced in May of 2006 as a replacement for Apple’s iBook. The MacBook was Apple’s best-selling notebook during most of its lifetime, although the lower-end MacBook Air models started taking over that title upon their introduction. The low-end 11-inch, 64GB MacBook Air now fills the old MacBook’s spot as Apple’s most inexpensive MacBook at $999 USD.

Via [TUAW]

AirPlay mirroring is a very cool iOS feature, although its major downside is its limitation to iDevices such as the iPad and Apple TV. Even though the app is merely a prototype for now, it will be a huge step forward for AirPlay mirroring once it’s released, either on the Mac App Store as Stanfill is hoping for or even elsewhere unofficially should Apple turn it down once it’s ready. As of now, only the iPhone 4S and iPad support its AirPlay mirroring technology. However, more iDevices are expected to be supported soon, and best of all, jailbreaking is not a requirement for use.

Look out for further details on Hacksugar from Napkin Studio as development progresses and a public release gets closer. Let’s hope Apple takes the high road and allows this into the Mac App Store once it’s ready, as Stanfill surely deserves it for his hard work in bringing us this amazing new AirPlay implementation.

Via [TUAW]