In the last few years a kind of cat and mouse game has evolved between Apple Legal and some of the more daring (and creative) members of the Cult of Apple: tempting fate by selling Steve Jobs collectibles, and risking the wrath of Apple. How long before your Cease & Desist letter arrives?

Here are some of the more popular items created in the past few years.

We’re back at it again today. After yesterday’s highly successful Twitter Trivia Giveaway we’ve decided to give everyone another chance to win the Twitter Trivia Giveaway. We’ve been giving out free stuff all week via Twitter, but we’re nearing the end of our weeklong giveaway. With only two more chances to win you got to make each try count. If you’d like to join our three other winners and receive a free iMainGo X we’d be happy to have one sent to you as long as you play by the rules.

At Apple’s HQ there’s a shop that sells t-shirts, pens, mugs and other logo goods. One is a t-shirt that says, “I visited the mothership.”

Here’s the new mothership: a mega campus that Steve Jobs is proposing to build in the heart of Cupertino, the town he went to school in as a boy. It’s also where he and Wozniak founded Apple in the mid-70s.

Here are some pictures of the massive new building to house 13,000 Apple employees:

Apple’s first CEO wasn’t Steve Jobs, but rather Michael Scott, who ran the company from February in 1977 to March 1981. Installed by Apple’s first backer Mike Markkula because Jobs and Steve Wozniak couldn’t be trusted to run the company, Scott has a unique view of Jobs in his youth: a hot head who ignored people and talent in favor of an anal-retentive attention to aesthetic detail.

Apple has infamously railed on Google for being fragmented on multiple occasions, lambasting the Android-maker for allowing carriers and handset manufacturers to dictate the terms of updating the Android software.

Cupertino was right to criticize: the vast majority of Android smartphone users couldn’t even be reasonably sure before now that they’d even be able to update their operating system in the future. But Google’s made a big step today towards addressing Android fragmentation: they’ve announced a partnership with carriers and handset manufacturers that guarantees that new smartphones will receive Android platform updates for a minimum of eighteen months.

My wife and I sat down at a nice restaurant last week. Our table was right next to a larger party of four adults and two young children — both girls under the age of 7 years old or so.

Each of the girls had her own iPad, and each iPad had some high-end noise-cancellation headphones plugged in. One girl was engrossed in a children’s movie, and the other was enjoying a series of apps designed for kids.

So of course I whipped out MY iPad and blogged about it.

Granted, this scene took place in Silicon Valley, where there’s no such thing as an inappropriate social context for consumer technology and, in fact, in the very town where Steve Wozniak lives (Los Gatos). Still, it was a remarkable scene, and one that will be repeated across the nation as the iPad phenomenon spreads.

Letting kids use or own iPads is controversial. Parents, teachers and others aren’t so sure about letting kids get sucked into yet another electronic diversion. Pilot programs at a few schools around the country to experiment with iPad-based learning tools are often met with criticism by parents and teachers alike.

Everybody’s asking: Are iPads healthy for children?

I’m here to tell you: That’s the wrong question.

Following a long 10-month delay, the wait for Apple’s white iPhone 4 could soon be over, according to three people with knowledge of the company’s plans. The device will be available through both AT&T and Verizon Wireless and will launch by the end of April.

A Bloomberg report on Wednesday cites three people who are familiar with Apple’s plans, while another report published on Thursday by Reuters cites two more who also claim the white iPhone 4 is currently in production.

A bout of manufacturing challenges have delayed the device – which is rumored to have included paint that becomes discolored and peels under heat, light leakage into the camera, and light leakage out of the case – the device that many thought would never see the light of day could finally be released from the Foxconn factory.

Despite a message on Twitter last month from Apple’s vice president Phil Schiller, confirming the white device would be available this spring, the recent removal of any image depicting the device from Apple’s website fuelled rumors that the handset would not be launching.

[via AppleInsider]

Unlike iFixIt’s gag, this Playmobil Apple Store Playset isn’t a real product, but if enough people are interested and Apple’s lawyers look the other way, maybe it could be.

From the description:

A quick peek at the miniature Genius Bar and we were feeling a bit woozy. Then we saw the tiny Steve Jobs presenting in the Keynote Theater on the top floor and that was it. Our wallets popped out faster than you can say Jonathan Ive and we plunked down whatever money was needed to own this amazing playset.

Of course, once we had the playset, we had to get the optional Line Pack to simulate our own exciting Apple product launches. Since it comes with a tiny Woz on a tiny Segway, it was a no-brainer. We decided that Apple & PLAYMOBIL™ together is the most unlikely and awesome collaboration ever. It changes everything.

Think Geek’s brought its April Fool’s Day products to market before, so it’s possible this could become real someday.

Before the Mac, before the Apple II, Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak made their first product: a digital Blue Box for hacking into telephone systems. In this clip from the 1998 documentary Silicon Valley: A 100 Year Renaissance, Jobs describes how the capability of this device so impressed two young teenagers that they began to realize the power of ideas and the potential of technology to control vast amounts of information.

If we hadn’t made blue boxes, there would have been no Apple.

They also realized the importance of good product packaging – nice wooden shipping case!

Proving that fact is always more interesting than fiction, ad man Steve Hayden remembers the making of Apple’s 1984 ad in AdWeek this week.

Marking the 27th anniversary, Hayden describes the utterly chaotic process behind the making of what’s been called “the best TV commercial ever.” Everyone hated it, and no one wanted it to run except Steve Wozniak, who offered to pay half the costs himself.

The first version of the spot was more Jetsons than Metropolis. The intention was to remove people’s fears of technology at a time when owning your own computer made about as much sense as owning your own cruise missile. We wanted to democratize technology, telling people that the power was now literally in their hands.

AdWeek: ‘1984’: As Good as It Gets