Following MacInsider's recent abrupt and mysterious shutdown, Macintouch today posted that the plug got pulled shortly after Apple representatives visited the MacInsider offices. When coupled with Webintosh's suspicion that MacInsider was run by two ex-Apple employees who were laid off in last March's reorganization, we're starting to see some pretty serious clues as to who's behind the recent Ninja Attack Campaign that's shutting down Mac-centric web sites faster than you can say "The Mob Killed My Brother." Suppose Godfather Steve is extending his recent "plug the leaks" attack outside of Cupertino? After all, both Mac OS Rumors and MacInsider tended to print lots of, shall we say, "sensitive internal information..."

MaCNN, however, posted a story that paints a less ominous (and therefore much less entertaining) picture, but we feel compelled to pass it on in the interest of completeness. One of their sources claims that the two people who ran MacInsider were just offered "real" jobs at NBC and Ziff-Davis, so they're blowing their virtual popsicle stand in search of something that more closely resembles a real adult life.

And unless they were quietly snuffed by Godfather Steve's Ninja Mafia Hit Squad, the dubious attraction of a "real adult life" also seems to have claimed the AppleSauce site, which also shut down recently. Macintouch pointed us to the author's personal goodbye note, in which he claims that he no longer has "the free time, nor the inclination, to spend all of [his] free time following Apple." (Rest assured that we at AtAT have no desire to acquire any more maturity than the amount we currently tolerate, so we plan to be broadcasting well into the next millenium.)

Lastly, faithful viewer Hunt Anderson notes the following: "In the conspiracy theory, let's not forget the MacRumorMill (www.macrumormill.com) - the first site to fall. It disappeared right about the time that Reality (www.AmbrosiaSW.com/conspire/reality) became "heavily edited" on what Apple Legal would allow. The MacRumorMill used to post both developer notes and reviews of most Apple developer releases." Dangerous times, indeed.