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'Today at Apple' Expands With Over 50 New Sessions Focused on Skills, Walks, and Labs

Tuesday January 29, 2019 10:06 am PST by Joe Rossignol
Apple Stores are getting a series of over 50 new Today at Apple sessions for 2019.


The new sessions, being added to the Today at Apple page alongside the announcement, relate to Skills, Walks, and Labs.
Skills are meant for those interested in learning new creative techniques to go further with our products, such as making a quick video with the Clips app or editing photos on iPhone. New Skills sessions include Notes and Chords with GarageBand, Sketching Ideas in Notes, Photo Editing Techniques and more.

Walks invite customers to venture outside of the store with a Creative Pro, where they will explore their surroundings, connect with their community and put new skills to use across passions like photography, music or health. New Walks include Capturing Cinematic Shots, Creating Soundscapes with GarageBand and a Health and Fitness Walk, Staying Motivated co-created with fitness expert Jeanette Jenkins.

Labs help customers experiment with creative techniques and complete the session with the beginning of a project. Many Labs have been co-created with world-renowned artists and makers. Building on the success of Labs with Florence Welch and photographer Chase Jarvis, skilled customers can find inspiration in new Labs like Beat Making with Swizz Beatz, Small Screen Magic with Zach King and Drawing Treehouses with Foster + Partners.
Today at Apple launched in May 2016 at Apple Union Square in San Francisco and expanded to Apple Stores worldwide a year later. The program offers free, hands-on creative and educational sessions related to topics such as photography, videography, music, coding, gaming, and art.

An example of an existing session is the Photo Walk, in which an Apple employee guides a group of people on a walk while providing iPhone photography tips. Another is the Kids Hour session Maze Challenge that tasks kids with programming Sphero robots to navigate a maze on the Apple Store floor.

Today at Apple also incorporates lessons from Apple's free Everyone Can Code and Everyone Can Create curriculums and tools such as Final Cut Pro X, Logic Pro X, and the Swift Playgrounds app for iPad.


Speaking at an October 2018 event in Brooklyn, Apple's retail chief Angela Ahrendts said Apple Stores have combined to host over 18,000 Today at Apple sessions per week, with the help of over 70,000 employees.

Related Roundup: Apple Stores
Tag: Today at Apple
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Erehy Dobon
3 weeks ago

Couple things of note - these today at Apple series talks are given in front of the giant monitors, where folks are supposed to sit on the wooden seats and gather in a community - these are not the one-on-one events that you're speaking about. You can see in the picture attached to this article the wooden seats I'm talking about.

My most recent Session was just over a week ago at the Palo Alto Apple Store and I assure you that the one-hour course (Taking Photos with the iPhone) was held at one of the wood tables (approximately 10 feet long) with taller (bar height) stools, so the table would have accommodated maybe 6-7 people (including the instructor) comfortably. The monitor fit on the desk without protruding so I figure it was somewhere between 27-32", nowhere as large as the one pictured in the photo.

The Palo Alto Store does have an area in the back of the store that resembles the photo, but that was not where this particular Session took place.

It was designed for 6-7 people, but since I was the only registered attendee, it ended up becoming a one-on-one session.

It's likely that the Apple Store sessions are held in locations suitable for the number of registered attendees and that some of the courses are better for smaller groups rather than larger ones.

Bigger is not necessarily better.

For education, sometimes a smaller group size is more effective.

For sure, I would not want to take an iPhone photography class in the 400-seat chemistry hall where I attended college. For iPhone instruction, it helps to be able to see the finger gestures since the device is so small.


As for the restrooms, we plunked a grand on an iPhone XS, spending close to 2 hours there (after spending a couple hours the previous day there), getting the iPhone configured and set up, and as we were about to leave, we asked to use the restroom, and they directed us to a Starbucks down the street, where we had to buy something to get access to use the restrooms.

So I think they should either make these apple stores quick stops, or if they're going to make them inviting and want people to come to them, they're going to need restrooms.

See this story:

http://www.siliconbeat.com/2013/03/01/dear-apple-store-wheres-your-restroom/

Well, you're quoting a nearly six-year old article.

I assure you that the Palo Alto Apple Store (including the original one at corner of Kipling, a.k.a. "Steve's Store") has restrooms that can be used by customers; I used it before this recent session. I made no purchase that day.

I have used the restroom at both Palo Alto stores several times and I have never been told to go to a nearby coffee shop (there are plenty in Palo Alto).

Again, maybe the Chicago Michigan Avenue Apple Store has different policies based on their clientele.

The Palo Also Apple Store is actually quite small and Palo Alto really doesn't see much in the way of tourist traffic like a store in a large city (New York, Paris, London, etc.) would see.
Rating: 1 Votes
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Erehy Dobon
3 weeks ago

Have they heard about YouTube yet?

I'm sure they have. After all they included their own YouTube app in early versions of iOS.

Don't you remember? The icon looked like a cathode tube TV in a wood cabinet, not the YouTube logo.

The point is that these Sessions are interactive and conversational. The instructors can tailor the curriculum to the actual attendees' interests. They can also answer specific questions.

That's not something a YouTube video posted three months ago will help you out with.

The Apple Sessions instructors appear to be empowered to go outside of the curriculum if it relevant to the general topic and is helpful to the person asking the question as long as I don't prevent the instructor from getting through the course material for other attendees.

In my two recent Sessions, both times I was the sole attendee and thus both times the instructors were happy to turn these into one-hour one-on-one tutoring sessions. Was I lucky? Perhaps although often it is good to see how other people are using their devices, perhaps in ways that I had not considered.

That is very difficult to do watching a prerecorded video that is following a strict script.
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