Hard Drive Replacement Ends April 12

If you bought an iMac between October 2009 and July 2011, you may have received an email from Apple about a failing hard drive. Some of the 1TB Seagate hard drives sold in 21.5-inch and 27-inch iMacs during this time may fail.
If your hard drive is covered by this program, you can have it replaced with a new one, free of charge*, here at Capitol Macintosh. We are an Apple Authorized Service Provider (AASP), and can replace affected hard drives.

This program ends on April 12, 2013 or 3 years after the original purchase date of your iMac; which ever is later.

*Data migration or transfer is not covered by Apple under this program, so please make sure to back up your hard drive before you bring in your Mac. If you prefer, we can handle the data migration for you for $47.50.

Click here to submit your serial number

Your hard drive does not have to be failing already. ”If your hard drive is covered by this replacement program call us, we'll verify it qualifies, order the replacement hard drive. The replacement drives are free, but please note that data transfer (different than migration) is not covered by Apple, and will be charged at $95/hour if you need us to transfer your data. The hard drive replacement program is good for three years from the original purchase date of your iMac, or until April 12th, 2013 - whichever date is later.

If you believe you have paid for a repair or replacement due to this issue, contact Apple regarding a refund.

Six things every new iPad (or iPhone) owner should do immediately

Summary: So you got a new iPad (or iPhone) as a holiday gift huh? Here's some things that you should do right now to keep your new gadget safe.

Enable Find My iPad immediately
Find My iPad used to be a paid service but it's now free and allows you to locate your iPad (or iPhone) on a map when it's lost - or more likely, misplaced in your house. First, you need to log into your iCloud account or create a new one in Settings > iCloud > Account. Then flip the slider for Find My iPhone in the same area of the Settings app to ON. When panic strikes use a web brower to log into iCloud.com and click the icon for Find My iPhone. Find My iPhone helped one of our employees lcote their phone that has fallen out of their pocket.
There's another critical step you should perform after enabling Find My iPad/iPhone:
”•Settings > General > Restrictions > Enable Restrictions (enter your passcode)
”•Then scroll to Privacy > Location Services and touch Don't Allow Changes

If you don't take this step, a savvy thief that takes your phone before the auto-lock engages can simply turn off Find My iPhone just as fast as you activated it. When Don't Allow Changes is enabled, the Find My iPad section of Settings > iCloud is greyed out and it can't be switched off.
Keep your iPad in a case
The iPad is a thin piece of aluminum and glass that is very expensive and one drop could be fatal. I know that some people hate to cloak their beautiful Apple devices in a case, but if you take your device out of the house, it could save you an expensive ($200+) repair.
Disable ad tracking in iOS 6
While we're on the topic of ad tracking, there's another place that Apple hides a little ad tracking switch. On your iPad or iPhone, navigate to Settings > General > About > Advertising (third from the bottom) and flip "Limit Ad Tracking" to ON. Not exactly intuitive. More information about the setting is available by clicking on the tiny Learn More link at the bottom of the screen.

Turn on Passcode Lock and Auto-Lock

If you leave your iPad in a taxi or on an airplane, anyone can pick it up and look through your email, contacts and photos -- and that's probably the least of your worries. A simple way to avoid unnecessary data exposure is with a Passcode Lock. You can enable it in Settings > General > Passcode Lock. A Passcode Lock is useless if a thief grabs your iPad while it's awake.So I also recommend enabling Auto-Lock which times out your iPad after a defined period of inactivity.

Opt out of interest-based ads from the iAd network
iAd, Apple's mobile advertising platform, displays relevant ads on your iPad based on your interests. If you do not want to receive these ads (or rather, don't like advertisers tracking your interests) you can opt out by accessing http://oo.apple.com/ from Mobile Safari on your iPad or iPhone while logged into your iTunes account. More information can be found in this Apple knowlegebased article

AirPlay Mirroring

One of the most useful features of Mountain Lion is AirPlay Mirroring. For those unfamiliar with AirPlay Mirroring (previously only available on certain iPhones and iPads), this feature allows you to wirelessly stream both your computer's screen and audio to any television that has a second-generation or newer AppleTV connected to it. This is a game-changer for conference and meeting rooms.
Assuming you have the requisite hardware (configured properly), using AirPlay Mirroring is a breeze. Simply click the AirPlay mirroring icon in your menu bar and select your AppleTV. Video and audio will then be mirrored to the television. In our testing and use of this feature, there is only a small 'lag' in the streaming of video and audio; it's great for presentations, but not ideal for watching movies (although other AppleTV features allow for movie-watching already.)
AirPlay Mirroring is only available on certain Macs running Mountain Lion. Older Macs do not support this feature, even if they have Mountain Lion installed. The list of supported Macs is:
”• iMac (Mid-2011 or newer)
”• Mac mini (Mid-2011 or newer)
”• MacBook Air (Mid-2011 or newer)
”• MacBook Pro (Early 2011 or newer)

Download it today:

OS X Mountain Lion - Apple

Hacked Yahoo email?

On July 12, the hacker group D33ds Company claimed responsibility for attacking a Yahoo service and exposing 453,492 plain text login credentials. Yahoo today confirmed 400,000 of its accounts were hacked, though it emphasized less than 5 percent of the credentials are valid. You can check whether your account was compromised here: Sucuri.

A big THANK YOU to our customers!

Capitol Macintosh is honored to be among the elite 20 Authorized Apple service locations to achieve the highest customer satisfaction score in North America - thanks to you, our customers.

Apple has begun honoring service locations who have achieved animpressive average CSAT (Customer Satisfaction) score of98.4%. Only 20 (of over 2500) locations in North America achieved this lofty goal. We are extremely proud to be in such elite company and to be so thought of by our customers. Thank you!

As a reference, the US overall average stands at 91%. How did we achievesuchhigh marks? We focus on the drivers to customer satisfaction: as an Apple Authorized Service Provider we scored96%in Professionalism,95% in Repair Turnaround Timeand96%in Repair Quality. Capitol Macintosh has also mastered setting accurate expectations:91%of our customers reported repair turnaround times as having metor beat the estimate that was provided.

Capitol Mac is also an Apple Premium Service Provider, a program started by Apple in the summer of 2011. Only 248 of the 2,500 North American service providers have achieved this distinction.

Oh, and 1 more thing: for 12 fiscal quarters, Capitol Macintosh had been honored with Apple's Commitment to Excellence award! This program has been replaced with the Premium Service Provider program which means we've now been honored for 16 consecutive quarters - 4 years! Every year since the program started.

Capitol Macintosh: Authorized Apple Reseller, Authorized Apple Service Provider, Apple Specialist and Apple Premium Service Provider: we are in the top 2% of Service Providers in all of North America.

New OS X malware variant attacks unpatched Macs

By Adrian Kingsley-Hughes | February 27, 2012, 4:13am PST
Summary: A new malware variant sets out to punish those who haven't been keeping up to date with updates.
Patching OS X is so simple, but yet there are people who still put it off. A new malware variant sets out to punish those who haven't been keeping up to date with updates.
The new variant is a Trojan horse called ”Flashback.G' and is makes use of two exploits found on older versions of the Java runtime. Users with macs runningOS X 10.6 ”Snow Leopard' are particularly at risk since this version came with Java preinstalled while 10.7 ”Lion' did not.
According to security firm Intego, this malware uses three tricks to try to get itself installed onto a system:
This new variant of the Flashback Trojan horse uses three methods to infect Macs. The malware first tries to install itself using one of two Java vulnerabilities. If this is successful, users will be infected with no intervention. If these vulnerabilities are not available ”“ if the Macs have Java up to date ”“ then it attempts a third method of installation, trying to fool users through a social engineering trick. The applet displays a self-signed certificate, claiming to be issued by Apple. Most users won't understand what this means, and click on Continue to allow the installation to continue.

This Trojan looks for specific websites (such as Google, Yahoo!, CNN, bank websites, PayPal, and so on) and tries to grab the user names and passwords used to log onto the sites.
If you are running OS X 10.6 then it is vitally important that you check to see that you have the latest Java update installed by runningSoftware Update from the Apple menu.
DO IT NOW!!!