How to get a new iPhone XS or Series 4 watch today instead of in 2-4 weeks it'll take to ship to you.

Say you've been thinking about buying a new iPhone or a Watch but felt dismayed by the Apple website saying they can't ship you one for several weeks. Maybe you even checked iStockNow.com to see the sporadic availability of phones but walked into an Apple store to disappointment. I've heard rumors that Apple stores get new stock each morning and people are reportedly lining up for 10am openings to try and get those, but there's a better way.

There are two important "tricks" to how you can buy a new iPhone or S4 watch today.

• Fire up the Apple Store app on your phone and select what you want to buy, then add it to your bag.
• Do it as close to just after 8am your local time.
• Change shipping to local pickup, and select a time to come in and get it.

I heard about this tip last night, and I remembered to try it out around 8:30 this morning. It worked. I'm picking up my new iPhone Xs Max later today.

What's interesting is you can go back in the app and adjust colors and sizes to determine what each store stocks every morning. In Oregon, there are three Apple stores clustered around each other, and it looked like in the Max phone size, all three stores had plenty of 256Gb Space Gray (black) phones, but few of the silver ones and no gold ones. For the watches, depending on which band you prefer, you can quickly tell the most popular basic color options (black watch/black band, silver watch/silver band) are in stock while more fun rose gold ones are not.

The most wild thing about this is if you wanted to wait in line at 10am for an Apple store to open to get something, those items have already been on sale for two hours before they open, and your chances may be slim.

So set a reminder tomorrow morning to check the Apple store app and see what you can get.