On the day that marks the fifth anniversary of the iPhone, it seems fitting to take a look at the various products Apple has inspired over the years. And that's just what "Inspired" by Apple does. It's a Tumblr blog from Patrick Mason which highlights the various homages to Jony Ive's designs. And with the likes of Samsung (and now Acer) adding new rip-offs to their product lines almost daily, it seems -- as John Gruber says -- "He’s never going to run out of material."
We've all seen the various Ultrabooks that ape the MacBook Air, and pretty much every Android tablet, ever, that shamelessly copies the form-factor of the iPad, but Mason's hilarious site documents some even more ridiculous rip-offs.
My favorites are the Roku LT, an AppleTV-alike which does little more than change the box's color to purple, and the almost unbelievable Galaxy Tab™ USB & SD Connection Kit (above), which might just be the actual Apple version with a lick of black paint.
I have already aded this to my RSS reader, and expect to have something new every day over which I can chuckle into my coffee.
One more thing. Before you ejaculate your bile into the comments thread (likely along with the word "fanboy"), and mention that the iPad and iPhone are obvious non-designs for a tablet, machines stripped down to their bare essentials, I suggest you take a look at this gallery of The Best and Worst Fake Apple Tablets, and this Google Image search for Apple tablet concepts. You'll see it wasn't always so "obvious" after all.
Inspired by Apple [Tumblr]
