Apple to start surveying 'Today at Apple' participants next month

Beginning in January, Apple will start collecting feedback from everyone who attends one of the company's free "Today at Apple" sessions at its retail stores.

"We'll focus both on their immediate experience and on their perceptions about the long-term value," Apple retail head Angela Ahrendts said in a LinkedIn post. "We want to be as rigorous in measuring our human impact as we are in every other part of our business."

Ahrendts avoided any specific details, but in the rest of her piece suggested that Today at Apple is geared toward "enriching lives," and that the company realized it needs "a new set of measurements" to gauge effectiveness and "human return on investment."

The Today at Apple program is a rebranding and expansion of the events long held at Apple stores. While most of these are small-scale workshops, like Photo Walks and the Kids Hour, sessions at bigger locations can include professional artists, authors, filmmakers, photographers, and musicians.

Since taking over retail Ahrendts has engaged in a massive revamp campaign, introducing not just Today at Apple but a modernized store design modeled after fashion boutiques. The executive has also tried to rechristen shops as "town squares."

10 Comments

mrarfarf 13 Years · 5 comments

About 6 years ago

This is so insane, to think people would want to just hang out in Apple stores without buying anything, by making them SO COOL, you'd rather skip a coffee meeting at Starbucks, and just loiter around at the apple store shows someone who does not have a grasp on reality. The concerning part is that while Apple has made some great stuff this year, I worry they might be getting so big, that the pressure to do EVEN MORE is pushing them into strange areas like this, instead of just making more great products.

Ecky-Thump 8 Years · 66 comments

People attend "Today at Apple" workshops?

gregg thurman 16 Years · 456 comments

mrarfarf said:

This is so insane, to think people would want to just hang out in Apple stores without buying anything, by making them SO COOL, you'd rather skip a coffee meeting at Starbucks, and just loiter around at the apple store shows someone who does not have a grasp on reality. The concerning part is that while Apple has made some great stuff this year, I worry they might be getting so big, that the pressure to do EVEN MORE is pushing them into strange areas like this, instead of just making more great products.

You can sure tell who has a vision and who doesn't. All you have to do is read posts here and on other Apple centric sites, they're chock full of them.

I'm not claiming to be privy to Apple's vision, or how good that vision is, but not knowing doesn't mean Apple doesn't have one, and I'm not going to question a firm that has grown 940% since FY2007, and in doing so became the world's richest, most valuable (by market cap) firm in the world.

Mrarfarf, I'm very glad you aren't running Apple.

pslice 18 Years · 152 comments

Ecky-Thump said:

People attend "Today at Apple" workshops?

I’ve gone to a couple. One was in China where we had a Chinese instructor teach us some tricks with a Walking iPhone tour. They even made sure we had a translator. It was loads of fun going down Wangfujing street and shooting cool time lapse movies and some photos with special effects. At home our closest Apple Store is 4 hours away so we enjoy it when we go to Minneapolis to visit the kids. The Beijing stores were the most fun. I really think getting to an Apple Store is always a fun experience. Those that don’t utilize them and live close are missing out.

Rayz2016 8 Years · 6957 comments

Ecky-Thump said:

People attend "Today at Apple" workshops?

Yup.

My local store has large school parties show up for sessions during the week. Robotics programming by the looks of it.

Which reminds me: I must learn Lua.