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I recently signed on for Apple’s new One on One training.  While I’ve been a Mac user for a long long time, and I think I’m pretty good with most things Mac, I thought it might be worth a try.  Actually, I have been watching for the Apple Store to offer an Aperture training- one of their brief free things, and they haven’t.  I bought Aperture, and have been fairly frustrated with printing from it.  My experience of the free training has always been good.  Thought it would be a chance to ask some specific questions and get me further on my way with the App.

Then, I went to an iMovie free training last week and it was great.  I’ve been using iMovie since it was introduced and while I like the new iMovie, I miss all the cool stuff that you used to be able to do in the app.  And actually I was confused.  LOL.  I thought I was going to an iWeb training, but it was iMovie instead. You see I’m moving my podcast to my WordPress blog, and wanted some help with not screwing up the RSS feed to the iTunes Music store.  Boy, am I rambling today.

So, at the iMovie training, I actually learned a few cool things I didn’t know. And when they said there is not likely to be a free Aperture class, I thought, OK, I’ll give the One on One a try. $99 a year for 52 hours of training works out to less than $2 hour for information.  and since the time can be spent on a wide assortment of topics, and be based on my needs, that sounds not too bad.

Also, I haven’t been very fulfilled at work.  I guess I wanted to get a feel for one on one training- how to do it.  Would it be a possible income stream for me to offer some training on the things I know?

So, I went in and bought it, and then came home and tried to schedule my first session.  Not a great experience.  What they failed to tell me at the store was that while it covers an hour a week every week, the Shadyside store- closest Apple store to me- is short trainers.  So, it is really hard to get an appointment!

I first tried to schedule for Aperture, and the first opening was in 3 weeks! So I booked it.  Then, I thought I would go back in and book for the upcoming week and pick a different topic.  But- you can only have 1 reservation open at a time! So, I had to cancel the Aperture reservation and then try to find a topic for the coming week.  The web site is extremely easy to use as long as scheduling is straight foward, but it is really lacking in providing enough information to help you make choices.  I expect this will either improve over time, unless the service fails completely.

I settled on an iPhone topic. My company uses Exchange Server so my calendar, and mail are connected to the exchange server.  But I’d like to also link to my personal iCal calendar and also my personal Mac addressbook.  So, I wanted to talk through a strategy for aggregating these things. The appointment was at 8AM.

I arrived right at 8, and was greeted at the door by a cute guy who knew my name.  He walked me back to the studio and introduced me to my trainer, Abby.  While I’m not sure if I’m totally thrilled about all of the changes at the Apple store, this attention to personal detail is really great.  Nice touch.

We dug into my issue and spent about 50+ minutes bouncing around iPhone, addressbook, mobileme syncing, and related questions and information.  Abby was right with me 100% and I appreciated her agility to switch subjects, link ideas and help make all the pieces fit.  It was clear that she could have handled the most simple basic questions as well as things more nuanced and more technical.  And when I didn’t have any more questions, we talked for a minute about scheduling the next session.

And the scheduling problem arose again! I logged in and looked for an Aperture session and there were no reservations available! We looked at openings at the other Pittsburgh store, but it is not very convenient for me, and so I’m not sure if I am going to go all the way out there or not. When I found a date for Aperture, the available times were horrible.  8AM or middle of the day.  I can do that with the Shadyside store as it is close to work, but can’t with the other store. If I understood her correctly, Shadyside is to have 6 trainers and are functioning at less than 50% that.  She herself, was just part time.

The only other thing that was a bit disappointing, was when she went to show me mobileme syncing.  She logged in on a store laptop and tried to connect, and it sat, and sat, and… sat.  She explained that it was a single Apple account that all stores use. This was OK wit me, in that I needed to understand the process more than I needed to see it exactly, but still not ideal.  And I have been bitten by the demo demons myself when giving presentations, so I could relate. This, like the scheduling, I would expect to improve as Apple works out the kinks in how they do this product.

All in all, it was a very good experience.  I got well more than my $2.00 worth of information.  And I left exciting about the stuff I’m doing as an artist, and on my blog, etc. That alone was worth the cost of the One on One.  I think that for me, a 1 hour block each week may not be ideal,  I bet I would do better with 104 30 minute sessions.  But that is just me. It may also be hard to be ready with questions and stuff I need to know every week for 52 weeks.  Maybe just 4 or 6 or so sessions would be plenty.  But time will tell. Looking forward to how this all unfolds.