I managed to schedule a One-to-One training session at the local Apple Store today. The first available date was, sure, the Monday of the week following Christmas, December 29. What a coincidence, a date that follows the ultimate purchase and return week.

Anyway, for my meeting I’ll try to make some sense of what Apple has done to the iMovie in iLife ’08, at least what I can understand during my 50-minute session. This baseline movie app for creative types who still don’t have Final Cut Express in their budget got gutted in its latest version, all to make it behave more like the Final Cut series. Somewhere in Apple’s software management this made sense, probably because nobody there ever spent three years working with the perfectly-useful iMovie from 2006.

I probably will come away from the training with a yen to move up from iMovie to the $199 Final Cut Express. That’s one thing you could learn from 50 minutes of training.

The greatest value in the Apple store is no more, at least not until 2009. One-to-One personal training, crazy cheap at $99 for up to 52 weekly sessions of 50 minutes, has been suspended until after the holidays. Apple sent a message advising everybody their one-year subscription to the service has been extended by one month. It’s a little secret, but Apple will even find trainers for you to learn Adobe products, not just the Apple software and basics like “how to clean up your desktop.”

Now, there’s no official shutdown of the training. But just try to get any class scheduled at all from the Concierge of your local store’s Web page. “Try again later.” Or, “Just come on in and buy something, already.” It’s okay; both Austin stores are cattle-cars of consumers by now, hipsters three deep shopping for the perfect iPod or laptop.

When you come back in January, maybe the din of the commerce will have worn off. One story from this fall at Softpedia reported that the aluminum and hard plastic dens of sales which are Apple’s stores make private lessons a challenge. Headsets for trainer and student solved the problem. So you can feel like a bomber crewman steering that new application.