A friend of mine at the University of Florida in Gainesville is starting at pharmacy school this fall and just found out she’ll be required to purchase an iPhone or iPod Touch for the curriculum.

According to UF, some of the pharmacy courses will have programs designed around the devices. The iPhone has a number of apps that can aid students, including “medical reference applications, blood glucose monitor accessories, and software that allows obstetricians to use their iPhones to remotely access virtual real-time and historical waveform data for their patients, are just some examples of the growing trend,” according to AppleInsider.

On the one hand, an iPhone could help any student be productive. I use iPhone’s Calendar, Todo and WeDict apps to stay organized in school. However, I know from experience that the iPhone can also be an incredible distraction, and a hindrance to learning if students aren’t disciplined enough to use it for the right purposes.

Some of the benefits of UF’s policy to require iPhones or iPod Touches for students:

• App Store offers useful apps to aid medical learning
• Aiding distribution of classroom podcasts, such as lectures and other classroom materials
• More efficient communication — everyone will possess the same device

Potential downsides of mandatory iPhones or iPod Touches at UF’s pharmacy school:

• High cost of purchasing the device, although it could potentially be covered by financial aid
• Distraction in the classroom — iPhone is essentially an inconspicuous personal computer
• Deterioration of learning if students rely on the device too heavily for information
• It’s a covert endorsement by an educational institution of a select corporation — sort of like when schools offer only Pepsi products throughout campus

What do you think?

Should the University of Florida’s pharmacy school require students to purchase an iPhone or iPod Touch? I would love to hear your opinion in the comments.

When I was in Miami, the Apple Store staffers told me I could buy an iPhone 3G S at the AT&T store without the account holder present, but no AT&T stores in Florida currently have them in stock, including stores in Miami, Orlando, Ocala and Gainesville.

I spent over an hour calling AT&T stores throughout the state. Why don’t AT&T employees have the capability to tell me if there is an iPhone in stock at a particular store???

I called an Apple Store in Orlando and asked how I could buy the iPhone 3G S without the AT&T account holder present, and an employee told me the only thing I could do was sign up for a new contract with AT&T… um, no thanks.

“No problem,” I thought. “I’ll order one online.”

So I went through the checkout process on Apple.com, hesitating before clicking Complete and spending $543.36, including an extra $10 for 2-3 day shipping — that is, after selling my 3G iPhone on eBay for $315.

I finally placed the order and received an email confirmation that said my iPhone should arrive between July 9 and July 13, twelve to sixteen days from yesterday. I’m not willing to wait that long.

So I canceled my order, called my dad in Miami and asked him to pick one up for me and ship it up to Gainesville. Hopefully I’ll have it in a few days. The problem is that, in the meantime, my phone will be deactivated because Apple requires you to activate the iPhone in the store when you purchase it, hence deactivating any other phone that’s using that account.

It makes no sense that I can buy an iPhone 3G S on Apple.com without a problem, but if you go to a physical Apple Store, they won’t sell it to you without the account holder by your side. In my opinion, if you’re willing to spend half a grand on a phone, you shouldn’t have to jump through hoops.

Has anyone else had trouble getting their hands on an iPhone 3G S? I’d love to hear about your experience in the comments.

I regret not seeing this letter in my inbox earlier, but I think it´s worth sharing. Of course, take this with a grain of salt. Here it is:

This is our story of how we created a breakthrough video camera app for the iPhone only to have our hopes unfairly crushed by Apple.

In October, we started development on iVidCam, a video recording app for the iPhone. We invested a lot of capital and resources because we knew if we got a video camera app working, then it would be an instant hit. By January, we had finished the mp4 video encoding engine, but we needed a way to take multiple pictures per second to make video.

In February, our breakthrough came. Apple featured 25shot, an app that took 25 pictures in 5 seconds. The app used a custom camera view and took 5 screenshots per second. Our team studied the app and integrated the same function into iVidCam. We saw Apple’s featuring 25shot on the front page of the App Store as a signal to developers that this function was highlighted and encouraged by Apple.

In March, we finished development of iVidCam and even added wireless transfer and YouTube upload functions to the app. We were confident that this app would go #1 in the App Store. It had everything users wanted – a functional video camera app, mp4 encoding, wireless transfer, and YouTube upload of the recorded videos. We posted the app to iTunesConnect for Apple approval on March 27. Several days later we were shocked to discover Apple had rejected the app due to what they said was an “unpublished API.”

The same day we called the highest management person at Apple we knew, John Geleynse. We met him at the L.A. Tech Talk last year and he appeared to be the main iPhone evangelist. We thought that he could surely help us. On the phone, he was cordial and even agreed with us that talking to the regular reviewers was not going to do anything. He told us to email him an email stating our case with specifics and that he would forward it to Lead of the App Review Team. He assured us this was the way to go.

We emailed John Geleynse the same day. And this was the beginning of almost 2 months of being ignored, neglected and overlooked by Apple. Our emails to the Lead of the App Review Team were not being directly responded to. We asked for dialogue, and they gave us no personal replies but sent us form letters intead. Throughout this process, we were committed to working with Apple and not complaining publicly. We wanted to give every opportunity for Apple to address our concerns. Apple deeply disappointed us by ignoring us for months.

* March 31-May 18 correspondence with Director of Tech Evangelism, John Geleynse

By mid-May we had reached the point of exasperation. Our efforts to dialogue with Apple, their main iPhone evangelist, and the Lead of the App Review Team had led to nothing. We decided to try one more time with Apple, this time writing to the highest management possible, Steve Jobs. Here’s our May 18th letter to Steve Jobs that we asked several high management people at Apple to make sure it got to him:

* May 18 letter to Steve Jobs

We ended up getting a reply from Senior VP Phil Schiller, who ironically is going to be giving the keynote speech at June 8, 2009 WWDC where Apple could announce their own video camera app for the iPhone. Phil Schiller’s email and following correspondence ended up to be another big disappointment. Apple never took us seriously and refused to dialogue with us on the issues we brought up.

* May 18-27 correspondence with VP Phil Schiller

After two months of being unable to dialogue with Apple, we learned that perhaps we were just too insignificant in Apple’s eyes. Even though we had published hundreds of iPhone apps in the App Store, we were just one developer with a complaint in Apple’s eyes. We decided to draft a petition letter to end the unfair practice of rejecting custom camera view apps by Apple.

* Petition Letter from Photo App Developers

And finally, we’ve decided to share our story publicly. Maybe Apple will change if enough people let them know they don’t agree with how they’ve handled this situation. We can no longer do it by ourselves, we need your help.

* Please email Apple to let them know you’re unhappy about their actions (appreview@apple.com and schiller@apple.com).

In closing, this saga has seeded many doubts about the partnership that Apple has with developers like us.

1. Our company has been damaged and devastated.

We’ve spent the majority of our resources on iVidCam, only to see it unjustly rejected and Apple closed to dialogue. It’s frustrating especially since we were big fans of Apple and our company of 6 iphone developers has been committed to developing iPhone apps and working with Apple. We were counting on iVidCam sales. Now our company is struggling to break even and we’re at the unenviable place of deciding whether continuing to develop for the iPhone is sustainable or not.

2. It doesn’t feel good to be disrespected, neglected, and misled as a developer.

It’s been a stressful process because we’ve tried our best to communicate and reach out to Apple, only to be ignored and not treated as a true dialogue partner. If Apple treats developers like this now, what is the future of Apple-and-developers relations? In our case, we feel like Apple misled us, changed the rules arbitrarily, and punished us for trying to be good iPhone developers that work within the system. Ironically, our company has been committed 100% to developing for the non-jailbroken iPhone, only to be punished by Apple. And if Apple comes out with their own video camera app on June 8, 2009 at WWDC, it will be a sad day for us and also thousands of developers. The App Store is not a good system when the people in charge can do whatever they want with no accountability, even at the loss and damage of other parties.

3. What’s a published API?

One of the key issues in our story is what constitutes a “published API”? We’ve stated this over and over to Apple, but we believe that one of the strongest publishing mechanisms they have is the front page of the App Store. Apple appears to meticulously choose which apps to feature. The featured apps encourage users to buy them and developers to develop them. In this case, Apple featured 25shot in February and QuadCam in May, along with approving dozens of custom camera view apps in between. These featured apps appeared to millions of iPhone users on their desktop and also on their iPhones (AppStore). If these apps were using an “unpublished API”, then why were they featured multiple times on the front page of the App Store? And why were dozens of these apps approved? If Apple was wrong in featuring these apps, then they misled developers like us to spend tons of capital and resources in development. Regardless, by featuring these apps, Apple clearly implicitly published the use of these APIs to millions of users and developers. And by continuously featuring these apps, Apple strengthened their published position of the custom camera api usage.

Please share this story with your readers.

yours,
David and Susan Lee
GP Apps

The buyer, whose alias was kammanns828287, had a 0 feedback score on eBay. After contacting this person all day and receiving no reply, I received an email the next day from a so-called “Stella Jones” claiming to have paid me via PayPal and asking me to ship the iPhone to her son in Nigeria:

Greetings to you. I am Stella Jones from US. I’m contacting you concerning your item on EBay, I’m presently in London on a business trip and intend sending this item to my son who works with the United Kingdom Embassy in Nigeria as a gift, I checked through USPS (WWW.USPS.com) website and found out that the postage cost to Nigeria is $100, so i have just made a swift payment to you via PayPal.

Read the full iPhone scam e-mail here.

After that, I received a fake PayPal email, with subject PAYPAL PAYMENT CONFIRMATION ID#30688737FG3075722, claiming “You have an Instant Payment of US $550.00 from Stella Jones to your account for an eBay item through PayPal.”

There was, in fact, no money in my PayPal account. So I have relisted the iPhone and reported the user who scammed me so that eBay doesn’t charge me the fees I have been billed.

It concerns me that on my current iPhone auction on eBay, there are a couple of persistent bidders with 0 feedback scores. I want to sell this iPhone already, because I’m leaving on a trip tomorrow for a week, but I have little confidence that I won’t be scammed again.

A search on Twitter confirms that I’m not the only one who has been scammed on eBay trying to sell/buy an iPhone.

Has anyone else been scammed on eBay when trying to sell OR buy an iPhone? Please share if you have had a similar experience.

Voice Memos is a simple, useful iPhone app. But frankly, I don’t know why it was necessary for Apple to create it, since there are other recording apps in the App Store that closely resemble Voice Memos. I use Griffin’s iTalk, for example.

This raises the question I asked over a year ago before the App Store’s debut: Will Apple compete with its App Store developers?

One of the problems I used to complain about most was iPhone’s “SMS Preview” feature, which prompted you with an excerpt of any incoming text message you received. You can imagine — or maybe you’ve actually experienced — the awkwardness when a raunchy text message from your significant other pops up on your screen while a relative or coworker is using your iPhone.

SMS Preview and the lack of text message privacy on the iPhone caused embarrassment for a lot of my readers, who left comments about inappropriate text messages popping up on their screens at the worst times — pretty funny, you should go read them.

After TWO YEARS of complaining about this extremely irritating issue, Apple has finally heard our pleas and given us the option in iPhone 3.0 to turn off SMS Preview for incoming text messages.

Just go to Settings >> Messages to turn SMS Preview on or off. That’s it, no more unnecessary text message drama.

The iPhone will shuffle once shaken regardless of whether you have the iPod app open. Stay tuned for a full review of iPhone 3.0.

Update: Deda adds, “I just tried the shake/shuffle feature. You can’t return to a previously skipped song if you choose to shake the phone.”

Apparently, the rush to download iPhone 3.0 is “clogging the pipes” at Apple and causing many users to get error messages that read: “We could not complete your iTunes Store request. The network connection timed out.”

You can keep track of this issue on Twitter.

If you’re concerned about bricking your phone and can wait until tonight or tomorrow to download iPhone 3.0, then maybe you should postpone the download.

In the video I use Spotlight to search for a Radiohead song, and then to find the details of a meeting.

Stay tuned for a full review of iPhone 3.0.