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It's been almost a week and still it's difficult to find an iPhone. Lucky for us, Apple has made it easy by providing availability updates. Double lucky for us, they provided that in JSON format.
So, we put our mashup monkeys on the project and they created an iPhone availability finder. Use the embedded widget below or visit this stand-alone page that you can bookmark.
Type in your city, zip code, or address. Tell it what model of iPhone you want (16 GB White, perhaps?). Using Apple's data of U.S. iPhone availability, it reports back your closest store. Sometimes it's hundreds of miles, but the life of a fanboy is rough.
Apple's own availability finder is updated nightly to reflect the next day's shipment. It is inaccessible during business hours because the iPhones available are likely to be purchased. (Note: the iPhone mashup uses a cached version of the data, so it's available all day--it just might not be accurate).
As of July 16, Apple was completely sold out in 23 of the 38 states where it has stores. The most difficult to find model is the 16 GB black, which is only available in 12 of Apple's 188 stores. Where's the best place to score that coveted phone? Think warm: Southern California and Florida have multiple stores with 16 GB black models.
The other iPhone styles are almost as scarce. Only about 20% of Apple Stores have 16 GB white iPhones in stock. Slightly more stores have the 8 GB version.
Update: We added a tutorial showing how we created the iPhone Locator.
Update 2: Apple removed their JSON feed. Their availability finder still works after 9 p.m., but hides the data.
