Vaporware alert! Back on the topic of terminally shameless misappropriations of Apple's product designs, do you mind if we quote ourselves from about a week ago? In reaction to the LUXPRO Super shuffle (which looks so absolutely identical to Apple's iPod shuffle that even the blind and congenitally mute raised an eyebrow and said "wow, bring on the lawsuit"), we said: "Is LUXPRO just counting on selling a ton of these things long before a judge can tell it to stop? Or was it never really planning on going into full production in the first place, and only made the prototypes to generate media buzz and draw traffic to its other products?" Answer: the second thing.

At least, that's what faithful viewer Jef Van der Voort tells us is being claimed by a reader over at Engadget. Apparently this guy called up LUXPRO and talked to a salesperson and "two senior execs" at the company to discuss a manufacturing arrangement. Reportedly these people told him that the whole Super shuffle thing was nothing more than a publicity stunt, intended solely to "leverage the media attention created by Apple to their advantage." To that end, "the Super shuffle is not in production," and LUXPRO never intended to put the Super shuffle into production. But what they do produce is the guts inside the alleged Super shuffle, complete with specs as advertised, and they're "looking for companies to hire LUXPRO to build uniquely designed players, based around the same electronics inside the Super shuffle." Ooooo, sneaky.

The plan worked, of course, since LUXPRO obviously got a zillion times more media coverage for the Super shuffle than they would have if they'd just shown up at CeBIT with a big sign that said "LET US BUILD YOUR MP3 PLAYER." Several aspects of this plan strike us as somehow unsavory, but technically no one got hurt (unless you count Apple's lawyers suffering massive disappointment at not getting to file a slam-dunk lawsuit), and from a strictly utilitarian viewpoint, it's hard to argue with results: it seems that now "there are at least two well-known U.S. sold brands that have expressed firm interest" in hiring LUXPRO to manufacture USB-based digital music players with Super shuffle guts firmly ensconced within different-- and presumably far less lawyer-baiting-- plastics. So while crime may not pay, faking a trade dress infringement apparently does.

Are you as disappointed by this turn of (non-)events as Apple's own legal team must be? Well, strictly for the record, we should mention that the reader who reported all these facts to Engadget was Jack Campbell-- yes, that Jack Campbell, a living legend among confirmed addicts of the seedier side of Apple-flavored drama. Given his extensive experience with posting "statements demonstrably contrary to factuality" (why, yes, we do have a shining future in the fast-paced world of online diplomacy-- why do you ask?), if your only chance at long-term happiness and spiritual fulfillment depends on the prospects of a LUXPRO-vs.-Apple courtroom cage match to the death, well, we suppose you could simply dismiss Campbell's testimony as untrustworthy... though we can't imagine why he'd be fabricating such a thing. Still, you gotta do what you gotta do.