Apple Support

Everyone always cites Apple's great support and customer service when they praise the company's products. Having owned an Apple product or two (iPhones, iPods, and an iPad), I haven't been able to see this until now. I have fixed most issues myself including cracked screens and the like. However, a couple weeks ago a shoddy headphone splitter that I had lying around broke inside the headphone jack on my new iPad. I was very angry and devastated. I tried every single trick suggested on forums, but nothing worked. Here's what did: I took it to the Apple Store on Walnut St. in Philadelphia. I waited for about 10 minutes for an "appointment". The guy took out a little penlight and fuddled with it for a minute like I had for hours over the past weeks. Then he apologized, asked if I had stuff backed up, and went and got me a new one. Brand new, he even took off the plastic in front of me.. I was out in 20 minutes total.

Now that's service.

Redirect Virus/Malware Fix

While trying to search for an alternative version of a software that I tried to buy but the payment wouldn't go through, I go some sort of a redirect virus/malware. It's commonly referred to as the "Google virus" because all links from google are redirected to some stupid deal site or otherwise. Anyway, I seemed to have contracted the zebra and not the horse, and didn't get the typical "TSSS" strain. So it took a while to get to a site that was talking about the same thing... came across this:

http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/forums/topic203346.html

They walked this lady through step by step and it worked perfectly. 

Two programs, GooredFix and ComboFix. Took about 10 minutes and I was good to go.

The deal sites most commonly implicated are shopica, findstuff, etc. 

But on the upside, it gave me some time to get to know my iPad better since I got sick of copying link URLs and pasting them.