TUAW presents to you the best of the obviously fake device shots we've seen in the last couple of weeks. On occasion they're beautiful renderings that are worth a second glance, other times they're out of focus shots that tipsters swear were taken quickly at a meeting on the Apple campus. In any case, they're a lot of fun.

Let's begin with this gem from the French blog Le Journal du Geek. In a post titled "Encore un peu de MacBook Touch?" ("Again a little MacBook Touch?"), we see what looks like a page from an Apple website:

This video is making the rounds lately -- on first glance, it looks someone running the iPhone OS on a Mac Pro with a 24" multitouch monitor. As you can see, everything more or less works as you'd expect, and therein lies the rub: anyone who's looked at it with a critical eye, including our friend and former TUAW-er CK Sample III, has pronounced it fake. I'd have to agree -- besides the fact that it comes from a visual effects house, the picture flipping at about :56 is a little bit off. How'd they do it? It's most likely just a movie running on a screen, with a guy pretending to control it. But even so, it's a compelling idea -- if you could find a multitouch monitor that worked like that and ran the iPhone OS with it, wouldn't it work exactly that way anyway?

I've actually brought up this idea before -- there is a ton of software running on the iPhone currently, and some of it is even better than the equivalent versions on the Mac. It would be extremely useful to port the iPhone's OS (and all of its software in the App Store) to another form, whether that be on your TV (I originally suggested a Wii-like interface) or on a multitouch input like this desktop. Apple has sunk a lot of work and design thought into this OS -- they may never do it, but it seems like it would be a terrific decision to bring some of that successful R&D back on to the TV or the desktop.

It's sad how much I want this whole tablet rumor to be true. So it's always a delightful surprise to find the latest Photoshopped fake in our inbox. Above is "Max Vinegar"'s contribution to the cause. I love the way it's artistically blurred, with just the right ceiling reflections and how the new-fashioned nano gives it a frisson of verisimilitude.

Got a better fauxtotablet? Drop a link into the comments and I'll put up a gallery of 'em.

The rumors are flying about gaming giant Nintendo licensing "a limited amount of content" for the iPhone, and the rumors all seem to point back to this post over on a site called No Heat. They name no sources (of course), but they say that these Nintendo games will show up on the iTunes store at $29, and say that the games will "cater to an older audience."

Now, if anyone is going to provide great gaming content on the iPhone, Nintendo would be a good fit-- with the touchscreen, they've already got some great properties set up on the DS (Brain Age would be a great fit, and of course all of their famous licenses). There are lots of great input methods that I'm sure Nintendo would love to take advantage of.

But $29.99 is a steep price for a mobile entertainment game, even if it's Mario. Super Nintendo games are running about $10 on the Wii's Virtual Console, so either a) Nintendo is going to make iPhone owners pay through the nose, b) the games will be DS quality-- because $29 is about what you'd find a new DS game for, or c) No Heat is making it all up, and this is just another product of the iPhone rumor mill.

Could this possibly be the first video taken by an iPhone? Over at iPhone Matters, Gregory Ng posts that he received a copy of this video from an Apple Store employee in California. In the video, you can see what appears to be an iPhone appearing on the iMac screen as recorded by its iSight. The video is not the highest quality and Ng writes that the sender compressed the video before sending it over email. What do you think? Real or hoax?
Thanks to Hadley Stern

Real iPhone Video or not?
	Looks real to me
	It's a hoax, dudes
	Not sure
	Huh? The iPhone does video?
pollcode.com free polls

Okay. This is humor and we all know that humor is not universal. So if you don't find this site as funny as I did, well, that's kind of the breaks. I think this fake unboxing site is hilarious and I loved how they put in all the standard unboxing shots that you'd expect. There's the whole story, starting off with the Amazon two-day delivery, the comparison shots between the iPhone, the quarter, and the SK3. There's even the ceremonial tossing of the now-useless cellphone competitors. They don't even try to hide the tape holding together the iPhone mockup. Brilliant stuff. Absolutely brilliant.

Thanks Stefan.

Today's iPhone Phorgery is, in my opinion, simply phabulous. I love the bright colors, the beautiful design and the great way the phakers integrated the phone into the commercial presentation. Today's TUAW forgery score is a 9.5+ out of 10, and even the East German judge is wildly enthusiastic about this entry.

So how do you Rate The Fake? What do you think about this week's mock up? Let us know in the comments

Do you hate the fake? Got a better one to suggest? Please let us know about your favorite fake via our Tips form.

As the minutes tick closer to Apple's Event and the mystery product(s) they will be releasing, the following TUAW-reader-submitted picture is either one of two things:

1) a last-minute faked photo of the MacPad, an Apple Tablet. Made probably by photoshopping a booting MacBook Pro.

or

2) the real deal.

I'm not even going to speculate. I know what I want, but if wanting something made it so, there'd be a whole lot of ponies running around middle America.

Well, well, looky here: Turns out that widely-distributed image of the supposed 6G "true video" iPod was a total and utter f-a-k-e fake. MacRumors points to this video (YouTube) that documents the creation of the original image, and this blog post right here shows why the second pic is also a fake.

That's too bad. I really wanted one of those.

Update: Readers are posting links to various sources (link, link) that point out discrepancies in the video vs. the actual image, hinting that the video itself may be the fake. This whole thing is starting to hurt my head. How about you compare them yourselves and make your own judgement -- and then we'll wait to see what Apple actually announces, making all of this speculation pointless anyway.

Reader, bl8ant writes in with this email: "6gen ipod images? hi, dont know if they are real or where they came from (other than on a server connected to a computer at a desk at a certain company that i'm freelancing at), but i can't find this version anywhere on the web, so who knows? anyway, it's a cool idea, real or not. where can i email or upload them to you at? they're 2 jpegs, low res. —bl8ant" So, I emailed him with our address and he sent in the pic here and the second one that can be found after the jump in this post.

They look real to me. Real fake that is. Still cool look and concept, but imagine the lawsuits and scratching complaints that would arise if Apple really did go this route... I'd still probably buy one, but as you know by now, I'll buy anything.