In less than a week Apple’s website last night shows that more than half of it’s stores have already depleted their stock of iPhones, completely wiping out the inventory in 10 states. Apple has a page on their website where users can check after 9pm each night for the expected inventory of their local stores the next day, which Monday night was showing 96 of the 164 stores nationwide as having no more iPhones available.

As of Saturday we reported that almost half of the stores in California we’re not showing inventory, and that’s after just a little more than 24 hours. Now stores in the states of Hawaii, Michigan, Minnesota, Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire, Oklahoma, Rhode Island, Utah and Washington are completely out of stock at the Apple stores. Customers can try AT&T stores which were expected to get …

A lot of us don’t have enough extra cash laying around to throw at a new iPhone much less enough to get one just to take apart, but that doesn’t mean I wouldn’t like to. Luckily others do have that kind of bank and are willing to take some pictures and share what they find.

A company called Portelligent makes a living out of taking apart gadgets, seeing what they are made out of and trying to figure out who made it and for how much. The company did just this with Apple’s iPhone after its release and through some educated sleuthing found out some pretty interesting stuff.

The weekend launch of Apple’s brand-spanking new iPhone was a tremendous success if you’re a shareholder in Apple stock, but if you’re one of the unfortunate customers that have been left out in the dark without activation by phone carrier and Apple iPhone partner AT&T then success is a four-letter swear word.

As iPhones flew off store shelves across the country over the weekend some customers found that Apple’s supposedly easy-as-pie activation scheme for the iPhone via iTunes turned out to be a never-ending nightmare. After registering their iPhone, selecting a plan and paying by credit card the iPhoners were told to wait for a confirmation email…and wait they did (and are still doing.)

Some bloggers and reporters (like CNET’s Declan McCullagh) gave a blow-by-blow account of enduring hours while waiting on hold to speak with AT&T or Apple customer …

It’s well known that creating a sense of urgency is one of the best tools a salesman can use when trying to sell a product. Whether or not this is a sales tactic we’re aren’t sure, but Apple has an availability tool on their website that shows which Apple stores in different states have iPhones available for the following day. Granted, the tool’s not very reflective of the fast-paced digital times that we live in but if nothing else it’s doing a great job of creating a sense of urgency in Apple fans.

We had heard shortly before the iPhone launch that AT&T stores were not going to be stocked with the number of iPhones that the Apple stores would be, and that the Apple stores would in reality have many, many iPhones available …

iPhones are already showing up on eBay for auction, listed as high as $1100 in some instances, and one we saw already had a dozen bids up to $760 in the first 30 minutes. Another had only been posted for a few minutes with a $0.99 starting bid.

If your bold enough to trust these folks that somehow have the iPhones “in hand and ready to ship” you can try your luck, but it doesn’t look like eBay is trusting them. Listings keep cropping up but we don’t often see the same one twice since eBay is pulling them almost as fast as they are showing up.

It looks like some security plans for the iPhone launch are falling through a little in some fronts. The 6pm local time launch on the 29th was apparently by design to give the iPhones time to arrive to AT&T and Apple stores that day. This would help avoid any ill-thought temptations employees might have with access to the iPhones the night before the launch.

It appears that the FedEx trucks have already started delivering iPhones today, and even though taking photos of them, or cameras for that matter, have been banned from the back rooms of the stores some photos have already leaked. In fact, according to the thread on MacRumors, “arn” actually used the iPhone to post to the forum.

Steve Jobs held a town hall meeting with employees today on the eve of the iPhone launch, and as part of that meeting announced that each full-time employee of Apple will receive a free iPhone. That’s over 17,000 iPhones that will be given away for the full-timers, plus any part-time employees with a year or more under their belt will get one too. Jobs has done this before a couple years ago with the 1GB iPod Shuffle, but the price tag is a little spendier this time around.

The Apple employees won’t get a chance to try out the iPhone right away on tomorrows launch but they should expect to receive them by the end of July as it looks like Apple is concerned about adequate product availability out of the gate. According to a ThinkSecret report, …

Adding to our daily installment of iPhone news for the week leading up to Friday’s launch, Apple has added yet another new video to their site showing off the touchscreen keyboard and typing instructions.

The video shows an actual QWERTY style keyboard upright in a portrait layout with each of the keys being fairly small, although in the demonstration video it all looks very easy and accurate. As you press each key it shows a “confirmation letter” that pops up to show you which key is under you finger. Apple also suggests being “deliberate” with your key presses which make it sound like some pressure is necessary. This may help with the reduction of fist-keying your text.

The video also shows off some spell check features and an interesting typing aid where the iPhone can recognize if there is a …

Apple released a couple new announcements today regarding Friday’s iPhone release from Apple and AT&T regarding the pricing plans for the mobile device along with activation information once you get your iPhone.

The rate plans for the voice service are bundled with the data plan and come in three different configurations. All three plans include unlimited data, mobile to mobile and includes Visual Voicemail. Visual Voicemail allows users to “see” the voicemail messages listed that are available to listen to and choose which to hear. The three monthly rates available for the iPhone run $59, $79 and $99 with voice minutes of 450, 900 and 1350, respectively.

Also, remember how iTunes is required to setup your iPhone? According to the announcement today, your iTunes account will be needed to activate your iPhone once you get it. This will probably work …

Although most likely just an internal name used for the plan, BoyGeniusReport has gotten some inside information from a “high up” source regarding the data plan for the iPhone, which looks like unlike current offerings from AT&T.

The “iPlan”, according to the source, runs between $35 & $45 and will have unlimited internet data access along with at least 2000 text messages with the possibility of unlimited. Information on the actual calling plan was not disclosed.

Also worth mentioning was the planned shipping method with FedEx. Apparently to help ensure the security of the iPhones in their delivery to stores the FedEx drivers are being dispatched in teams. The 6 PM release time on the 29th was also done for security purposes as well to stop any stores from selling (or losing) any iPhones before it was time. The shipments will come into the AT&T …

In the odd and unlikely event that you are not fully aware, this Friday will mark the launch of very possibly the most hyped gadget ever made. Not to say that the hype isn’t justified, but if nothing else Steve Jobs and Apple have done a great job, intentionally and otherwise, keeping this product in the spotlight all the way up to the week of the launch.

Some of the latest happenings leading up to the week include more information available on the Apple website. They’ve added a fairly lengthy and somewhat interesting guided tour of the product, so if you aren’t up to waiting in line starting Tuesday you can at least feel and talk like you own the phone. In this case even the big wigs and celebrities aren’t even getting any special treatment when it …

Doing a great job keeping up their momentum, Apple today announced that YouTube videos will be available on the iPhone when it launches June 29th. A new application for the mobile device will allow users to eventually watch the full lineup of YouTube videos in the H.264 (not Flash) format and access them through Wi-Fi or EDGE.

Of course all the videos on YouTube were not originally coded in the H.264 format so not all will be available right away but YouTube is promising that 10,000 of them will be ready for the launch on the 29th. YouTube will continue to encode the clips until all of them are available in the new format this fall.

Overshadowed by the iPhone portion of the press release, Apple also announced that YouTube videos are now available through Apple TV. Apple TV owners can …

Apple today announced that the iPhone, still slated for its debut on the 29th of this month, will have a longer battery life than originally communicated. Instead of the original promise of up to 5 hours of talk time back in January, of talk time, Apple is now upping that talk time to 8 hours. This also increases the time on other features including 6 hours of Internet use, 7 hours of video playback, 24 hours of audio playback and introduces 250 hours of standby time.

“With 8 hours of talk time, and 24 hours of audio playback, iPhone’s battery life is longer than any other ‘Smartphone’ and even longer than most MP3 players,” said Steve Jobs, in a press release. “We’ve also upgraded iPhone’s entire top surface from plastic to optical-quality glass …

Apple has added a few new pages to their site about the upcoming June 29th launch of the iPhone, one of which has some steps to get yourself ready for the ownership of an iPhone.

The page shows information that for the most part has been already released, including the launch date along with information on the integration of the iPhone and its feature functionalities. The page gets your ready to setup your new phone with contacts, email, calendar items and media such as photos, video and music that you can synch up with your iTunes account.

Oh, and by the way; about that iTunes account. You’re going to need one. The last paragraph mentions that in order to set up your iPhone you will need to set up an account at Apple’s iTunes store. So, if you’re planning …

Shortly after the iPhone was announced questions rose by many about the ability to write 3rd party applications on the OS X platform similar to what is done for the Mac. In a couple of interviews Jobs let us know that OS for the iPhone would not be open to developers to the dismay of many.

Today at the WWDC 2007 Jobs released some information and demonstrations of Apple’s new Leopard OS along with news to developers about the iPhone. Opening up the platform while still maintaining a secure environment has been a challenge for Apple, but they made what Jobs described as a “sweet” compromise. They didn’t open up the OS, but will let developers build applications that run on the Safari web browser engine on the iPhone.

This will allow developers to build web …