The iPhone 5 is far from the first Apple product to be obsessively scrutinized well before its official release.

When Apple launches a new product—like the expected launch next week—it's often the last step in a long news cycle that began months, sometimes years, in advance. Where does that process begin? Almost always, with a whisper online that's anything but innocent—a piece of hearsay or speculation that's become a new kind of currency among the tech press: an Apple rumor. That's the subject of this infographic, presented by PCMag.

You know them, you've read them, and you may have even re-posted them. Apple rumors, once started, spread across the Internet like the most contagious kind of virus imaginable. Even though they're universally unverifiable (if they were checkable, they wouldn't be rumors), almost every technology site takes part in the ritual of acknowledging and dissecting Apple rumors. And if page traffic is any indication, readers are riveted.

Once the rumors about an Apple product reach a critical mass, various rumor-related phenomena take place. Sometimes, observers take it upon themselves to create elaborate Photoshops of what they think (or, more often, hope) the rumored product will look like. And if certain authoritative figures (Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak among them) share their thoughts on the rumor, it can often metamorphose and spawn more rumors.

The massive amount of interest in Apple rumors is partly a indication of the unparalleled popularity of the company's products. But Microsoft and Google products are popular, too, yet those brands don't inspire the same kind of furious attention that Apple commands. The company's lifestyle marketing and obsession with secrecy have fueled a quasi-religion around its products, whose disciples are only too eager to evangelize by spreading rumors about them.

The is a classic example. Although the company hadn't, until this week, even hinted that such a device even existed, the Internet has been talking and speculating about it since the iPhone 4 release. From supplier leaks to anonymous sources to analyst "checks," there's been no shortage of reports about the iPhone 5, even though no one will even know what it's called until next Tuesday. Probably.

For as long as people keep buying Apple products, there will be rumors about them. While each one is unique, they all share some commonalities. The graphic below breaks them down: