Roger Fingas
Apple is on the verge of phasing out its "One to One" training sessions for Apple Store customers, aiming to direct people into free, open workshops instead, a report said on Monday.
The company will honor any current One to One memberships until they run out, but no new ones will be sold, a source informed MacRumors. One to One costs $99 per year and offers basic training on Apple products via a mix of personal and group sessions.
Apple already runs a variety of free workshops at its stores, but the company is allegedly looking to reorganize them around themes like "Discover" and "Create." Workshops should also be easier to find on Apple's main website, instead of being buried in subsections for individual stores.
The motivation for the change is unclear, but Apple has largely ignored One to One during the past few years in terms of marketing and improvements. That could mean dwindling public interest in the program.
Alternately — or because of low interest — Apple might also want to maximize the labor it gets out of retail staff. Workers running personal One to One sessions aren't free to talk to other customers or process sales, which can potentially impede business.
AppleInsider Staff
Malcolm Owen
Oliver Haslam
Andrew O'Hara
Wesley Hilliard
William Gallagher
Christine McKee
30 Comments
Has anyone here ever used them or know anyone that has? Not that my experiences amount to much but I can't think of a single person that has used those sessions.
I have a source that rold me that they are just getting rid of the annual price and the lame ass requirement that you buy a computer to get it. Instead the data migration will be like $30 and you can buy packs of lessons, at what will work out to being way over the $99 you pay for a year
I know people who have has standing weekly sessions for a number of years.
A full year for the price of one AAPL share? That's a pretty good deal.
Has anyone here ever used them or know anyone that has? Not that my experiences amount to much but I can't think of a single person that has used those sessions.
I went to one free session once just to see what it was about, but there were people utterly new to computers and it made the class intolerable.