No computer manufacturer has come close to fostering a user base as fanatical as Apple's. Given that a substantial percentage of Apple users are also talented graphic designers, it’s not the greatest surprise that a rich seam of photomontages depicting hypothetical new Apple products can be found on the internet. A new video iPod has been eagerly anticipated and enthusiastically faked for months, and with the real thing expected later today, we thought it was a good time to highlight some of the finer examples of Apple fakery.

1: The ‘Next Step iPod’

As depicted in this short movie, the ‘next step iPod’ anticipated the iPhone with its touch screen interface and widescreen format. It was much imitated by other Apple enthusiasts who saw it as the ‘ideal’ iPod design

2: The iHome

The iPod story

Facts, figures and pictures from the first six years of the $17 billion device that changed the music industry

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Multimedia

• The new iPods

Notwithstanding the name being in use elsewhere (after all, it didn't stop the iPhone), the iHome was a painstakingly mocked-up 'media centre' computer reminsicent of the later, far smaller, Mac Mini. The sheer attention to detail, with layers of replica packaging (albeit in English rather than American), make this one of the most thorough Mac fakes ever.

3: iTunes PSP

Sony's elegant PSP portable gaming device could almost have spring from the fertile mind of Mac design wunderkind Jonathan Ive. It would be a perfect fit, then, for Apple's all-conquering music library application to be recoded for the PSP. Except it wasn't.

4: The iWalk

Shortly before the launch of the original iPod, rumours abounded of a new PDA being prepared for release at Apple’s Cupertino HQ. Similar to Apple's earlier Newton, the device was dubbed the iWalk. This mythical device was perhaps the first entry in the extensive 'parallel universe iPod' catalogue.

5: The 'Clamshell' iPhone

Simple, sleek and classic, it seemed to have everything that Apple's pioneering design team would want in a phone. The only detail missing was the iconoclasm and unpredictability that we have learned to expect.

6: The PowerBook G5

Principally due to cooling issues, the last pre-Intel Mac processor never made it into a portable casing. That never stopped the Mac community hoping for it. There were several mooted G5 laptops mocked up by amateurs before the Intel switch but this revolutionary design with slide-out screen and mousepad is the most memorable.

7: The Mac Pro Cube

Even the most unsuccessful Apple products inspire fervent cults within the devoted Mac fanbase. The G4 Cube was fraught with problems, such as cooling issues and a tendency for its motion-sensitive on/off switch to be triggered at the most inopportune times. Nevertheless a small group of the faithful still await a second coming of the mid-size powerhouse.

8: The iPhone wristwatch

What Dick Tracy would listen to his Madonna albums on. A smooth-looking bracelet with a curved LCD which, were it ever made, could only appeal to that narrow subset of hardcore Apple geeks who are also, improbably, young women.

9: The Fat Nano

This one is so recent that it could yet prove to be true, but many of the images depicting a smaller, squarer iPod Nano have evinced supicious image editing artefacts which reveal a certain degree of Photoshop tinkering. If Apple were to extend the Nano line they would surely come up with something a little more imaginative than this squat and rather unattractive player.

10: Everything else.

Sites like B3ta , Fark , and Worth1000 run regular Photoshop competitions where designers vie to devise and execute the best design on a given theme. This Worth1000 imaginary apple product gallery contains iRons, an iCar and definitively the last thing the design wizards at Infinite Loop will create: an iNuke.

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