With Macs growing more popular on college campuses, why not get the college student in your life something they'll actually use? This gift guide is filled with things that any Apple-loving college student should want/need.

For the dorm
If your dorms are like most, then you might be sharing a room with up to four others. With limited space, you shouldn't have to sacrifice with limited computing/entertainment. The Griffin Simplifi is a great place to start. The Simplifi does tripple duty as an iPhone/iPod dock, USB hub, and media card reader. With the Simplifi, you can have one USB cable to plug into your Mac (or PC) and get instant access to iPhone/iPod syncing, downloading pictures from your media cards (it supports SD, Media Stick/Pro, SDHC, xD, and CF).

If you like rocking out in your dorm, then look no further than the Logitech Pure-Fi Anywhere 2 speakers. These speakers have a great sound and look. They also don't take a ton of space, come with a portable case, and they have a remote control. The speakers are compatible with all iPods/iPhone with the 30-pin dock connector on the bottom.

For the walks between classes
You can easily brighten the long walks in between classes with an iPod nano (or any of the other numerous iPod/iPhone devices). Sure, you could use the plain old earbuds that come with the iPod/iPhone, but you might also want to take a look at the Coosh headset for iPhone/iPod. This headset is perfect for the walkers/runners in your life, because the loop on the headset keeps the earbuds from popping out of your ear and breaking. You also get good sound, without sacrificing the fashionable white earbuds. If you're look for some good, cheaper sound-isolating in-ear headphones for iPhone, look no further than the Radtech ProCable headset.


Other goodies that college students love:

• We can't express how great iTunes Gift Cards are. You can pick them up almost anywhere (including online), and they can be used to purchase music, movies, TV shows, and iPhone/iPod touch applications and games.
• If you are regularly missing your favorite TV shows, then it might be worth it to invest in an Apple TV and hack your Apple TV with Boxee. You can also install Boxee on your Mac and save a few hundred dollars.

Abilene Christian University is announcing a pilot program to provide an iPhone or iPod touch to every new student. At first glance, I found myself wondering: if some colleges are providing MacBooks with tuition, doesn't an iPhone seem like a less-expensive attempt to lure new blood? Upon further consideration, I think there are some distinct advantages to a pocket-sized device in a learning environment. From constant connectivity to ultra-portability, it could provide a means for every student to access learning materials any time, from any place.

ACU has obviously considered this, and then some. With apparently well-coordinated plans to take advantage of the devices – including podcasts, mobile-accessible class materials, active-learning strategies and a re-focusing of the campus media – they're preparing to take maximum advantage of the iPhone/iPod touch possibilities. If it's a gimmick, it sure seems like a useful, well-thought-out one. For more information, case studies and future plans, take a peek at the ACU Mobile Learning page.

I've always thought keeping track of school-related courses, assignments and projects was a little clunky with apps like iCal and Entourage, and apparently Logan Rockmore agrees, so he created assignment planner. Answering the call of students everywhere, assignment planner brings a number of classroom-focused abilities to the time management table, including:

* filtering assignments by completion status and type
* course and textbook tracking
* color-coding assignments based on your criteria
* Dashboard widget to quickly monitor assignments

Naturally, a demo is available, but assignment planner's price is just right: $5 scores you a license for this Universal Binary app.

Thanks Ronald

We haven't talked about iTunes U here in a while, but it's been on my mind lately, as I'm heading up my U's roll-out. It's a long, tortuous process--because of our internal bureaucracy, not Apple's--but, despite the fact I haven't been talking to our official reps (the extent of those conversations has been "we're still working out the details"), I have had the opportunity to sit down with some people from Apple and talk about the project. One of the topics of discussion was the direction of iTunes U 2.0 development. Apparently Apple has significantly increased the personnel dedicated to the project and has a number of enhancements planned. The person I was talking to couldn't tell me what, exactly, but he said that they were looking at community feature requests. Naturally, my next question was "well, what features have people requested?" The answers surprised me. Among the most requested features is on-site storage. This was a little bit of a shock, since one of the selling points for me was letting Apple handle the potentially multi-terabyte storage requirements and not worring about managing--not to mention funding--a SAN of that size myself. I can understand, though, that people want to keep control of their own information, and have on-site backups, etc. Closely following that was e-commerce capability. Again, a bit of a surprise. I wouldn't expect a free service to allow me to charge for access. on the other hand, I suspect that some professors would like to include materials that require royalty payment, so some vehicle for processing that will be required eventually, I suppose.

The #1 request, though, completely floored me: DRM. In fact, it is so in-demand that it has apparently been the deal-breaker for the majority of universities that had been approached about iTunes U and refused. That revelation literally left me speechless. It's one thing to realize that not everyone is as rabidly anti-DRM as I am, but DRM in the classroom flies in the face of not only my general IP position, but everything I like to believe about academic freedom. I've heard of cases, of course, where universities have claimed faculty-developed course materials as work-for-hire and property of the university, but that's never been the case at any university I've been associated with and I've generally understood that those were fringe cases. The idea that a significant number of universities would refuse to participate in iTunes U because of a lack of DRM is just...staggering.

Of course, that doesn't mean that FairPlay or any other DRM will find its way into iTunes U. But if Apple is dedicated to the project and the one of the biggest stumbling blocks seems to be DRM, well, you do the math.

And the worst part? If FairPlay does show up it won't be Apple's fault, or even the RIAA's. The universities will have done it to themselves.

Update: just wanted to clarify that second sentence a little. It's come to my attention that the original wording led a couple of people to jump to incorrect conclusions. You guys remember the bit about "assume," right?

These must've slipped past our radar, but last week Aspyr Media gave Universal Binary powers to The Sims 2. A patch has been released that will update any previous version to 1.0 Rev D. Along with UB support in this patch is also a list of fixes that I found over at Inside Mac Games, like zooming with the Mighty Mouse scroll ball and fixing a crash when running the game on 10.4 with some NVIDIA video cards. You can grab the update at Macgamefiles.com.

Also on the Sims 2 topic is a trailer Apple posted for University, a new pack that brings the college years to your Sims characters complete with a college town, partying and the obligatory pranks. The Sims 2 University Expansion Pack can be had at the Apple Store.