Last July, Apple silently stopped selling the white polycarbonate MacBook through its online store and only sold it to educational institutions thereafter. Today, Mac Rumors reports that Apple has informed the few remaining retailers of the product that the manufacturer is no longer producing the notebook and is hereby classifying the baseline MacBook as ”End of Life”.

The white polycarbonate MacBook used to retail for $999 and was once the cheapest Mac notebook available, though now the MacBook Air has taken its place for the same price with a thinner form factor and a solid state drive in the base model.

[Mac Rumors]

As reported by YourDailyMac, new iPhone operator profiles that were recently released by Apple show that the iOS device manufacturer may release iOS 5.1 on March 9th. The profiles also show that the iOS 5.1 update will be available on the iPad, iPad 2, iPhone 3GS, iPhone 4, iPhone 4S, iPod touch 3G, and iPod touch 4G. According to YourDailyMac, the newly-discovered profiles were intended for operators based in Finland, France, Greece, Japan, and Sweden and since iOS updates usually debut at the same time globally, it would be accurate to expect iOS 5.1 to release on March 9th in the US and Canada as well… Read more …

Late today, Apple released an EFI update for their 2010 iMac, MacBook Air, and MacBook Pro models that adds Lion Internet Recovery to the devices. More specifically, Apple has enabled Lion Recovery over the Internet on the mid-2010 iMac, late 2010 MacBook Air, and the early 2010 MacBook Pro. If you have one of these models, then it is recommended that you check Software Update and download the EFI update as soon as possible. If you prefer to download the updates directly, then you can find them in the links after the break. Read more …

Today, Apple informed their iPhone developers that the corporation is now requiring them to submit screenshots of their applications at the Retina resolution (960 x 640 pixels) as means of forcing developers to move towards the more HD specifications that the Retina display offers users. Updates to current apps must also include these new enhanced Retina screenshots. So, if you’re a developer then it’s recommended that you optimize your app for the Retina display and update it as soon as possible. You’ll get better ratings and Apple will actually allow you to keep it in the store as well.

Required iPhone & iPod touch Screenshot Upgrade for Retina Display

When you create or update your apps in iTunes Connect, you must upload screenshots that are high-resolution. We require your screenshots as high-resolution images so that your app is optimized for the Retina display.

The requirements for high-resolution images are 960 x 640, 960 x 600, 640 x 960, or 640 x 920 pixels. Images must be at least 72 dpi, in the RGB color space, and the file must be .jpeg, .jpg, .tif, .tiff, or .png. You can update your screenshot files at any time in iTunes Connect.

[Mac Rumors]

According to a report today by the Wall Street Journal, Motorola last October 17th “demanded” that Apple provide them with a 2.25 percent cut of their iPhone and iPad sales — which would add up to be in the billions of dollars. (FierceWireless notes that the iPhone sales alone would be more than $1 billion.) In other words, Motorola is attempting to obtain a substantial amount of compensation for the patents that Apple infringed. Both Apple and Motorola refused to give a statement on the matter, according to WSJ.

Motorola Mobility was acquired by Google on August 15th of 2011 for $12.5 billion and Google hoped to use them as a “dedicated Android partner” that would receive updates to newer versions of the mobile OS much faster than others, though updates still seem to be taking a while to roll out to popular handsets like the RAZR and Bionic.

[Wall Street Journal via FierceWireless]