Apple Computer last month began notifying its service partners that some companies are illegally manufacturing digital music players that look very similar to its various Apple iPod models in an attempt to pawn them off to unsuspecting buyers.

Two of the most commonly counterfeited iPods appear to be the iPod nano and the iPod shuffle. Apple's tiny flash memory MP3 players, the iPod Nano and iPod Shuffle and microdrive based iPod Video are on the top of the list for counterfeiters. All the counterfeiting units are circulating on eBay and on sale usually at less than HALF the price compare with the price offered by authorised Apple Stores.

Beware of sellers that are using original Apple iPod web download pictures to sell counterfeit iPod as they do not represent the actual item that you will receive!

The counterfeit iPod Nano, when compared to the real iPod Nano seems like a very poor attempt at duplication. Where as Sony's Memory Sticks are counterfeited quite well which appear identical to the real thing but both iPod Nano and iPod Shuffle have more than enough cosmetical differences to easily tell what's real from what's fake which the quality of the counterfeit unit also bears little resemblance to the real thing.

Characteristics of counterfeit iPod Nano not found on genuine version:-

1. The LCD screen is longer and displaying a clearly different user interface/operating system.
2. Older fake displays 'MENU' as 'M' and has writing below the screen and its fake click wheel positioned closer to the LCD screen.
3. Extra Vol symbol control at the bottom of the click wheel while the Play/Pause symbol is located at the center instead of at the bottom of the click wheel.
4. Lacking a standard iPod Dock connector at the bottom of the unit and it also ship without a standard USB to iPod Dock connector cable.
5. Sporting a non-standard headphone jacks where the ear-piece design are totally different
6. Most of them have fake 2GB/4GB/8GB memory capacity, the real capacities are usually a lot less below 1GB.
7. Fake has additional capabilities such as: MP4 Video, FM Radio/Recorder and Voice Recorder.
8. They are sometimes stamped with a valid Apple serial number which several of the fakes have been found to use the specific Apple iPod serial number '6U545TK2TJT'.
   
   

   Yet again there is now more ways to spot the fake so called iPods:
   

   1. Most now come in the real iPod nano box just forced in
   2. The discs are the smaller types of discs not containing iTunes just drivers for using the MP3/MP4
   3. The back of the iPod nano is now alot different than what is told in aussiememorysuply's guide many now look like this:
      - Fake
      

      - Fake
      

The above images are of fake iPods. On the first image you can tell it is fake by having a look at the apple logo it is alot bigger than it is on a normal iPod nano.
On the second image you can tell that it is fake for many reasons such as:

• It has the microphone logo
• The USB logo is on there
• The USB jack is at the bottom and on the iPod nano it is not
  
  When you recieve your item it may have came from China Shanghai
  
  
  Hope this helps and good luck eBaying