My local Apple Retail Store was out of iPhone 4, and it’s highly likely yours is as well. You can’t reserver one from AT&T and even the few Wal-Marts and RadioShacks I called were out. I didn’t leave the Apple Store empty handed however.

If you show up at your local Apple Store, the staff is allowing you to add your name to a priority list. This list is essentially your way of staking a virtual claim to incoming iPhones. Once you have chosen the model you want, you have to sign in with your iTunes login and you’ll shortly receive an email with the below information.

When a iPhone 4 comes in, you’ll receive another email stating that you can pickup your iPhone 4. From the time you receive the second email, you have 48 hours to purchase your phone at the store you reserved it. I clicked around on the Apple website, and haven’t seen a link to the priority list anywhere. This appears to be an option only in Apple Stores. The Apple staff I spoke to didn’t know the length of the wait for new iPhones to arrive.

Good luck to everyone still looking to purchase iPhone 4!

Notes are easy to make. After hitting the plus sign in the corner of the screen, I am brought to the “New Note” screen. Then I put in a title and write my note. When done with the note, an icon can be assigned to label the note. Hopefully a future version of Synotes has a wider selection of icons to better match the note I have wrote.

Notes can be shared easily via e-mail. The web site provides an rss feed as well.

Searching in the app not only searches by title, but also by content of the notes. Being able to search within notes is great and quite helpful.

I can access my notes when on my computer too. The app quickly syncs with the Synotes web site. Notes can be made at the web site, which syncs back to the app. The web site has a few downsides. There is no way to search through notes. Also, there are minimal ways to organize notes.

Each note has important information including creation and last modified dates, where the note was created (in the app or on the web site), as well as version history. Any note can be reverted back to its previous version.

I am pleasantly surprised by how easy it is to make notes in Synotes, and I highly recommend it for users seeking a way to make notes.  Syncode is coming out with an iPad version of Synotes too, and it will be interesting to see how well it turns out. Synotes 1.1.1 is compatible with iPhone OS 3.0 or later for $1.99 (iTunes link).

“Welcome to Macintosh” is a 2008 documentary chronicling the history of Apple. Important figures in Apple’s past make appearances, including Guy Kawasaki, who was responsible for Macintosh marketing in 1984, as well as Andy Hertzfeld, who worked on the original Macintosh design team. Leander Kahney, the author of the popular Apple book “Cult of Mac,” is in the documentary also. “Welcome to Macintosh” will be airing on January 4th at 9:30 PM EST.

The 2009 documentary “MacHEADS” discusses Apple fans and the popularity of Apple products. There have not been any films in the past that have focused on the legions of fans that are devoted to Apple. “MacHEADS” will be airing January 5th at 10:00 PM EST.

“Planet of the Apps” discusses the phenomenon that is mobile phone apps. The popularity of these apps was fueled by Apple allowing third-party apps for sale for the iPhone and iPod touch starting in July 2008. Other companies have tried to mimic the App Store’s success by launching stores of their own, but have not been nearly as successful as Apple has. “Planet of the Apps” will be airing on January 7th at 10:00 PM EST.

I rarely watch movies so I have not seen either of the documentaries, but it will be exciting to watch them as well as “Planet of the Apps.”

A recent article in the Wall Street Journal discusses Apple’s interest in competing with Nintendo in the portable games market.  If I were Nintendo, I would be worried.

Nintendo has been able to beat previous handheld competitors, such as the Sega Game Gear and Atari Lynx, but Apple is different.  Previous competition was focusing on games only, whereas the iPhone/iPod touch can do so many things very well.  The Sony PSP does do a lot too, but not nearly as much or as well as the iPhone/iPod touch.

iTunes has helped Apple effectively sidestep brick and mortar retailers to provide digital content, which is the future of content distribution.  Nintendo has few digital offerings, but these downloads are limited to the DSi, which makes up a small percentage of Nintendo’s handheld sales.

Developers of all sizes do not have to pay much for development costs and have a far easier time getting on the iPhone/iPod touch platform.  Apple’s review process has been arbitrary and lengthy at times, but less restrictions have been placed for apps compared to DS games.  There is also far more variety in content then the DS provides.

There is already a large library of games for the iPhone/iPod touch.  There are poor titles in iTunes, but there are also many great games.  These games are also priced cheap, which is attractive for consumers.  DS games usually cost upwards of $30.

Apple does face some obstacles.  Like the Wii, many developers have not designed games for the iPhone/iPod touch’s unique controls in mind and have ported games from other platforms that had “regular” controls.  It is a way for large publishers to milk successful franchises.  Publishers have been focusing more and more on popular franchise that do not stray to much from what made them successful, so care is not taken when brining games to the iPhone/iPod touch.  At least for Nintendo they can make good games for the Wii’s controls.  Apple must rely on third-party developers to make games that work well with the touchscreen.

The iPhone/iPod touch does not have as many great games as the DS.  With Nintendo’s franchises on the DS, this is not surprising.  The App Store has not been open for long (since July 2008), and with larger developers making a bigger push to bring popular franchises to Apple’s handheld, the gap will close between Apple’s and Nintendo’s portable game offerings.

It is hard to compete with a device that does many things well, which is why some companies have made devices that do one thing very well (the Kindle for example).  Apple has been able to make a great multi-functional device, while Nintendo has not shown this yet. It will be interesting to see what Nintendo does to maintain dominance in the handheld market to ward off Apple.

Browsing through my inbox today, I found a link I emailed myself quite some time ago. The gist of the video linked below is how the iPhone interacts at a “cell phone reunion”. The video might not be new, but it’s definitely funny. As info, the video is definitely NSFW.

The animated video can be seen here on CollegeHumor. Enjoy!

App rearrangement is a simple process. First, upgrade to iTunes 9.0 and iPhone OS 3.1. Connect your iPhone OS device to the computer and select it in iTunes. Choose the “Applications” tab and iTunes now displays your app pages as they appear on your iPhone or iPod touch. Apps can be moved around or deleted however you please. Pages can also be rearranged. Sync when you are happy with the order.

The “Applications” tab also lists apps by category and entrance into the App Store. Originally, it was sorted by name only. They will not automatically sync in this order though.

There are a few other limitations. Web apps or apps that came with your device cannot be deleted. Web apps must still be deleted on the device. Both these types of apps can still be moved around within iTunes.

Though far from perfect, being able to rearrange icons in iTunes 9 is a great feature and makes my life easier.

Unless you have been under a rock lately, you probably heard of this little conference last week called WWDC. At said conference, Apple announced that iPhone 3.0 software will hit iTunes June 17th. June 17th is THIS wednesday!

I’m glad Apple decided to release the new iPhone OS and the new iPhone 3G S on separate days. The simultaneous launch of iPhone 2.0 software and iPhone 3G was a disaster.

I’m excited about iPhone 3.0 software because I’m not yet sure if I’m going to upgrade my original iPhone to iPhone 3G S. I plan on running iPhone 3.0 for a few weeks to see if I need to upgrade to iPhone 3G S.

Oh yeah, CCP stands for Cut, Copy, and Paste. Finally! What feature in iPhone 3.0 software are you excited about?

Did you miss the news about the iPhone 3.0 software today? The iPhone 3.0 software will fix MANY of the gripes about the iPhone. I’m very excited about some of the new iPhone 3.0 software features!

If you want to watch the iPhone 3.0 presentation Apple held today, Apple has posted the video online.

The only part I didn’t like about the event today was the iPhone 3.0 shipping date. Customers can expect the iPhone 3.0 software “this summer”.

A few days ago I was browsing my Google Calendar and I saw an interesting link in the top right corner. A click later and I found out that Google now offers free Mobile Me like contact and calendar syncing.

Google Sync supports iPhone, Blackberry, Windows Mobile, and Symbian phones. Google Sync uses Microsoft ActiveSync. If you are already using your iPhone with an Exchange server, you won’t be able to use Google Sync since you can only have one ActiveSync profile per phone.

Make sure you have a backup of your calendar and contacts before using Google Sync. During the Google Sync setup, the iPhone will delete your contacts and calendar information. Google Sync is a beta product so be sure to have backups!

Despite the amazing functions and styling of the iPhone, some people still aren’t happy. In todays web-centric world, where do people go to vent their frustrations? The internet of course!

Please Fix The iPhone is a website dedicated to those who want to tell Steve Jobs and Apple what is lacking from their favorite mobile phone. The website allows you to vote on existing wishes or submit your own wish. Wishes range from the obvious MMS and copy & paste, to “files and folder management”.

The website is beautifully designed and easy to navigate. You can navigate the wishes by searching for your wish, browsing by tags, viewing the most wanted wishes, and viewing the most recent wishes. “Fixed” wishes are also kept on the website, though some of the “Fixed” wishes are people that are requesting functionality that already exists or things that would need to be fixed by parties other than Apple.

As you would expect, Please Fix The iPhone has a iPhone optimized version of the website. Just visit the site in Mobile Safari to view the iPhone optimized version.

If you want to make your iPhone wishes known, Please Fix The iPhone is a great place to do so. The big question with the website is, is Apple listening? The folks behind Please Fix The iPhone are basically doing free market research for Apple, so it would be wise of them to listen. I already voted for my wishes. I’m crossing my fingers that we’ll see copy & paste by software version 2.5!

Got an iPhone? Help Technologizer get to the bottom of iPhone owner satisfaction from around the globe. After crunching the numbers, they’ll report back on the findings.

Update: That was quick, the survey is now closed.

1. Lock your phone so it requires a password to use
2. Slide to unlock, then hit the Emergency Call button
3. Double tap your home button
4. Click the blue arrow by a contact with an email address and click the email address
5. You’ll be taken to a blank email; hit cancel
6. Now you have access to all email accounts on your iPhone
7. You can do the same trick for text messages and Safari if you have a URL in a contact

Obviously this is a huge flaw if you have sensitive data on your iPhone.  The flaw only occurs if you have your Home Button set to Phone Favorites.  Apple has not released a fix, but you can change the Home Button function to another action and the flaw will no longer work on your phone.  Just follow these steps to change the Home Button function:

1. Open Settings
2. Click General then Home Button
3. Change the setting to anything but Phone Favorites.  I prefer Home since even setting it to iPod will allow access to your music.

Gizmodo has a video of the flaw in action.  Lets hope Apple fixes this flaw in the next software update.  I wonder if this will affect any businesses who are considering the iPhone as a BlackBerry or Windows Mobile alternative?  If I was an IT manager, this would seriously worry me about Apple’s commitment to security on the iPhone.

[Via TUAW]

The single biggest reason I haven’t spent a dime on iPhone apps or games is that I can’t demo them. I’m cheap when it comes to spending my hard earned cash on something I may use for 5 minutes and never use again. Even though you can’t demo iPhone games or apps, websites are filling the void offering screenshots, videos, and quality reviews. I recently came across a great website for iPhone game reviews.

Touch Arcade is run by Arnold Kim, the guy behind MacRumors. Touch Arcade is a blog thoroughly devoted to iPhone games and accessories (yes, there is at least one iPhone gaming accessory in the works). Game reviews contain a screenshot, a brief review of the game, the price, a link to the game in the App Store, and often an embedded YouTube video. Before you spend your cash on an iPhone game, you might want to stop by Touch Arcade and see if they have reviewed it!

If you’ve been having some problems with iPhone software 2.0, Apple hopefully has your fix. I just fired up iTunes tonight and much to my surprise, iPhone 2.0.1 software update was available. What’s included? Two words, “Bug fixes”. The update fills in at 242MB. I haven’t been having a lot of problems with my iPhone, but I have had a few crashes now and then. Hopefully 2.0.1 will treat my iPhone well.