iPhone 101 (Canadian edition): Don't forget to sync with iTunes

For the past year when it comes to the iPhone, us Canadians have had to watch enviously as our American neighbors got to have all the fun. Well, no more! As of today I have joined the ranks of the enlightened -- at least, my wallet has been "lightened".

I am, like many of you, a software junkie. As such, one of things I am really excited about is the App Store. Imagine my surprise today when I tried to access it from my gleaming new device, only to run into an error message when I attempted to download my first app. The error stated "Your account is only valid for purchases in the Canadian iTunes Store." Huh?

My first thought was, "this darn thing has GPS on it, doesn't it know I'm in Canada?" So I went looking in the international settings on the phone, and sure enough the region format was set to United States. I dutifully changed it to Canada and tried again, to be met again with the same error.

At this point I should mention that I had, up until this point, not synchronized my iPhone with iTunes. I had not planned to, since my MacBook Pro is currently down for the count with a dead video card, and it will be a week before the Apple Store has one in stock to repair my machine.

Frustrated by my inability to download apps, I finally threw caution to the wind and synchronized my new iPhone with a newly downloaded copy of iTunes on the Windows desktop I am relegated to using while waiting for my laptop to be repaired. Unfortunately, I still had no luck.

Then it occurred to me to log into the iTunes Store in iTunes using my account. It was at this stage that iTunes informed me that I was viewing the wrong store, and transferred me over to the Canadian iTunes Store. One more synchronization of the iPhone was needed to transfer my iTunes Store credentials into the phone, and I was finally able to waste untold hours downloading applications.

I imagine this tip will apply to almost nobody, but here's hoping that if there's someone else out there that is so dazzled by the iPhone that they are unable to think coherently, as I was, that they will find in this post the help and understanding that they so desperately need. Or something like that.