Can reviving the lost glory of Apple Store help boost iPhone sales?

Employees say customers complain that the classes proceed only as quickly as the slowest learner and recommend bringing back the one-on-one sessions

Web Smith’s recent experience at his local Apple store in the suburbs of Columbus, Ohio, has been an exercise in frustration.

There was the time he visited the Easton Town Center location to buy a laptop for his 11-year-old daughter and spent almost 20 minutes getting an employee to accept his credit card. In January, Smith was buying a monitor and kept asking store workers to check him out, but they couldn’t because they were Apple “Geniuses” handling tech support and not sales.

“It took me forever to get someone to sell me the product,” says Smith, who runs 2PM