If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery then Apple is getting it in spades.For those that worry about Apple blazing a trail for others to copy less expensively, its not that simple. A product like the iPhone is heavily tooled rather than fabricated. The hole for the headphones is actually drilled. To do this, Apple have hogged the world's supply of the type of high tech, multi-dimensional machine tool needed.While companies like Nokia may copy, they may not be able to get the same build quality, even if they want to. Vote on the most blatant copy and post tips in the comments.

Kowloon Walled City (KWC) was a 10-16 storey monolithic 6.5 acre city block in the flight path of the old Hong Kong airport, that housed somewhere between 35,000 and 50,000 people when it was finally demolished in 1993. 30 times the density of Manhattan with no streets and little daylight, it was a rat infested, cockroach ridden filthy labyrinth. KWC was a no-man's land that fell neither under British Jurisdiction nor Chinese, where Hong Kong's appetites for the 3 vices: prostitution drugs and gambling could be satiated, but where ordinary families lived alongside nearly 800 factories and shops. It had 161 unregulated doctors and dentists along with food producers from whole pig roasters to the suppliers of most of Hong Kong's fish balls. Most of the people that lived in KWC never left.Dozens of sites have covered KWC before (as have we), but its such a strange and unusual Oobject that we've trawled through hundreds of sites to try a pull together a list of our favorite images and links which succinctly describe it.

Bang and Olufsen are famous for their superior design in electronics in the period prior to the 80s, yet there are no designers employed by the company. Instead, all design is traditionally outsourced and the Bang and Olufsen heyday, when their products were must have items for the homes of architects and designers is largely due to one man Jacob Jensen who designed a range of classic products between the late 60s and 80s.Like Apple today, Jensen obsessed with build quality and finish, and eschewed visible buttons wherever possible, using below glass illuminated controls and even proposing gesture based interfaces.Most satisfyingly, unlike current trends in design from double curved car shells to rounded corner boxes on web pages, Jensens trademark was ruthlessly squared off edges.

Solar cookers are reflectors which focus sunlight enough to heat food, but they are a simple eco-friendly gadget that happens to look interesting and comes in a large variety of interesting forms.Because solar cookers are shiny and look like satellite dishes, they have a particularly futuristic appearance which often creates an extreme contrast with the surroundings where they are used, as some of these testify.

The first in a two part list. Here are a series of strange and unusual bus stops, including those with domestic or air conditioned interiors, odd structures and a variety of innovative integral advertising.

For the last decade, Apple have absolutely dominated gadget design, bringing modernism to the masses in a way that architects never did. Yves Behar, the Swiss born (but not Swiss) designer is the first person to really challenge Apple's hegemony, he designed the original Slingbox and Paypal's recent attempt to compete with Square, but is becoming well known because of the superior design of the Jawbone headset and Jambox wireless speaker. Here are our favorite Behar designs.