At Macworld Expo in January, I talked to a guy at a booth who was demoing a hands-on iPhone training product. The developer, Saied Ghaffari, believes there are three types of people:

• Clickers -- like most TUAW readers; people who take any application, click buttons and menus, and learn the app themselves
  
• Non-clickers -- people who think they'll break something if they click or tap a button
• Middle -- people who need some assistance in getting started in learning an application

Saied's company, It's About Time Products, develops products for the middle and non-clicker markets. They've introduced a Flash-based iPhone training application called It's About Time to learn iPhone that is available online ($24.95) now and at Apple Stores ($29.95) on June 23rd.

Rather than a typical "watch what I'm doing" screencast, It's About Time to learn iPhone uses a click-to-learn approach. You watch Saied demonstrate how to use an iPhone function, and then use the virtual iPhone to practice what you've seen.

The app has online notes so you don't have to write your own, and a full list of tips and tricks. Automatic updates are also part of the program, which works on Macs and PCs.

Note to self: buy this for Dad.

Do you make documentation? Do you constantly find yourself having to explain step-by-step procedures to do things on the Mac? BlueMango Learning Systems has been doing this stuff for a while, and the tedium eventually drove them to create their own tool to make things faster. That's innovation for you-- if you can't find a tool, build one (that's how Plasq wound up creating Skitch). Screensteps is truly handy for anyone needing to illustrate steps, like bloggers doing how-to's, all the way up to professional manual-makers. Scott got a quick demo on an excursion to Moscone West. Video after the jump.

With Mother's Day coming up, the perfect gift for your 'switcher mom' might be personal lessons in the Macintosh way. Don't have that kind of time? Mmm-hmm. Really. You never call, you never write..

Well, if you're looking for something more wrappable than a bookmark for Apple's Switch 101 support pages, there's a new training product aimed squarely at PC-to-Mac switchers and the tasks they need to perform every day. It's saddled with the ungainly name of "It's About Time" to learn the Switch to Mac but I'm beginning to think of it as "Switching with Saied," since Saied Ghaffari is the genial, slightly-overexcited video host who walks you through basic computing tasks on side-by-side Windows and Mac desktops. This is the second training product from the company, following on the heels of "It's About Time" to learn iPhoto.

"IAT"TLTSTM is featured on Apple's download site at the moment if you'd like to check out the demo; the full version is $25 for the downloadable version, $30 for the boxed version. Note that you need at least a 1280x720 display to use the product.

When I was about thirteen, my older brother, Craig, was really into cars and fixing them. I'd follow him around and watch him work on his Camaro in the garage. Like a doting little brother, I wanted to be like him and was awestruck at how much he knew about cars and engines. I can remember asking him how he knew so much about them and how I could learn what he knew. Craig handed me a huge stack of car magazines and told me to start reading. I was flabbergasted. Where do I start reading? Which do I read first? Is Car&Driver more important than SuperChevy? I can remember flipping through a few of his magazines and quickly being overwhelmed at the amount of information I'd have to know to be like Craig. I soon went back to my Garbage Pail Kids cards and DOS manuals. I gave up on being a car mechanic but learned an important lesson...the best way to start learning something is to just start learning it. It doesn't matter where you start as long as you start somewhere and keep at it long enough until the knowledge begins to gel in your mind.

Being a good Mac tech starts with knowing the Macintosh and its operating system--namely, Mac OS X. Good car mechanics are often filled with arcane knowledge about the vehicles they work on. They tend to know which parts break down first and can diagnose a problem from an extensive knowledgebase of vehicles and engines and parts. I've discovered that good Mac techs are the same way--they tend to know pretty well the insides of many different Macintosh models and the peculiarities of each. They know, for instance, that the Rev. A iMac G5 often suffers from logic board failures and "exploding capacitors". They can often diagnose a problem--or if one is happening--just by using the computer in question.

File this under: There's a market for that?! LoadPod, the company that will fill your iPod with your CDs for you, have just announced Hands-on iPod and iTunes training for those of you who are comfortable with a convoluted interface and find yourself daunted by the simplicity of iTunes and the iPod. Each training session runs $79 or $139 in tandem.

If any TUAW readers actually give this a try, let us know about it.  I have some special magic water to sell you...

[via MacMegaSite]