Apple launches Today at Apple website as it expands its in-store course line-up with classes in art, design, music, photography, more
Last month, Apple announced its plans to offer an expanded set of educational sessions at its stores, which will now feature more in-depth training …
Context & Ripple Effects
The website gives Today at Apple a discovery layer outside the store itself: sessions in art, design, music, and photography become browsable and bookable online rather than walk-in only. It lands mid-run of an education push that continued days later with Apple's free Swift app development curriculum on iBooks, headed to six community colleges that fall.
The move also rhymes with Apple's editorial branding elsewhere: the redesigned App Store's "Today" tab, covered in the iOS 11 redesign coverage, applies the same daily-programmed framing to software discovery that Today at Apple applies to physical retail. Later curricula like "Everyone Can Create" extended the same teaching posture from store floors into schools.
First-order effects
- Customers gain a single web destination for finding and signing up for expanded in-store sessions, turning Apple's retail footprint into scheduled classrooms rather than ad-hoc demo spaces.
Second-order effects
- The storefront site feeds the same pipeline as Apple's formal education efforts — the Swift curriculum and community-college partnerships — giving each program a retail funnel and each store visit a curriculum follow-up.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, Apple's stores function less as sales counters and more as an owned training network spanning hobbyists, students, and founders — a durable moat built on skills tied to Apple tools.
The trend: Apple is assembling an education layer — retail classes, iBooks curricula, and founder programs — that converts its stores and software into ongoing learning channels for its ecosystem.