Apple In Store Training

One of the features of Apple products that builds brand loyalty is the training sessions.  This morning my wife and I attended a free tutorial on using the iPhone 5.   As I have said before, I have used Apple products for a long time.   I've bought every version of the iPhone.  But the 5 is my wife's first non hand me down phone.  And I have proven to be a lousy instructor when she has a problem.   She had a bunch of questions - some of which I could not answer.   So both of us went to the session which was held an hour before the store opened.  There were about 8 of us in the session but also allowed some follow up questions after the tutorial.

The session (she also went to an iPad session when she got that) was fun and started with basics about the camera and Siri and Maps and Contacts and mail.  I thought I would be bored but found that the instructor was able to mix things I already knew with things I did not.  That was great.

My wife had three problems with her phone.  One of her email accounts is a POP account and the phone for some reason would not accept the designations that she provided.   Her iPad works fine with this account.  After the session, the instructor figured out how to fix it.   At the same time, because the APPs came in part from my iCloud account - she kept getting asked for my password and iCloud account.   We now understand how to figure out which APPs came from my iCloud account.   Third, she wanted to limit her contacts to a list which did not include all of mine.  And they figured out a way to do that.

If you are having a bigger problem with a product you can get one to one training (again by scheduling) and for the most part I have found that the extra fee you pay for that ($99 per year) is worth it.  They are not up on iBooks Author yet but I found some great tips on Keynote and a couple of other pieces of software.