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Still looking for that elusive in-store iPhone 5s? Screen-scraper web app is here to help

If you’re still hoping to pick up an iPhone 5s from your local Apple retail store, developer Mordy Tikotzky has put together a web app to help.

Just go to the iPhone Check website, put in your ZIP code (it’s US-only at present), select your desired color and carrier and hit the Submit button. The web app carries out the search for you, screen-scrapes the results from apple.com and then presents a neat, color-coded table of results.

Apple briefly introduced an in-store pickup option, pulled it after one day and restored it a few days ago. The tool is a very handy way to check availability, but if my quick tests are anything to go by, you’re still not going to have much luck finding a gold one (other solutions are available …).

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Comments

  1. I’m still looking for the iPhone 5s to even appear in the Polish Apple Store…

  2. I don’t think this tool is accurate unfortunately. The results conflicted with some manual searches I performed on the store.

    • Ben Lovejoy - 10 years ago

      Curious – it is a scraper so it shouldn’t be possible to generate a different result from a manual search, so your post makes me wonder whether it could be caching results

  3. Jonathan Winters - 10 years ago

    I got mine on day 1 at Best Buy… the rep I spoke with said they had “very few” 16GB models left, but had plenty of the 32GB and 64GB. Not sure if that has changed, but I’ve always had a really easy time picking up new release Apple hardware from BestBuy…

Author

Avatar for Ben Lovejoy Ben Lovejoy

Ben Lovejoy is a British technology writer and EU Editor for 9to5Mac. He’s known for his op-eds and diary pieces, exploring his experience of Apple products over time, for a more rounded review. He also writes fiction, with two technothriller novels, a couple of SF shorts and a rom-com!


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