It finally happened. Your iPhone or iPad is dead and your friends at CityMac have said there’s nothing more to be done in the way of repairs. The device is out-of-warranty and it would be cheaper to buy a new device than to pay the cost of a whole unit replacement. There’s no reason to worry, your friends at CityMac are here to help with replacing a broken device.

What are My Options and How do I Move Forward?

1. Check to see if you have a backup

• One of the most common questions you’ll hear when you come into CityMac following the loss of a beloved device is, “Do you have an iCloud back-up?”
• The most common answers consist of, “No” or “What’s that?” or “I’m not sure.”
• If your answer is "yes," to check the content of your back-up, visit www.icloud.com
• login using your Apple ID and login information.
• If you are logging into iCloud.com for the first time, you may get a message prompting you to setup iCloud. Click through the prompts until you are into your iCloud account.
• Once into the website, you’ll see 12 familiar iOS app icons. These are the iCloud web-app versions of the same applications you are used to.
• Once on this page, check out your contacts, pictures and any other content that you might find pertinent. Once you open an app, these the content within them will let you know what information is currently synced, and therefor backed-up, through iCloud.

2. Reset your Apple ID Password if You've Forgotten it

• Visit this website: https://appleid.apple.com/signin
• This page functions as the catch-all for managing your Apple ID.
• Among these options, you can, “Reset your password”.
• From this point, you’ll have the option to have a password reset link sent to your email or you can answer preset security questions to recover your password.
• Unfortunately, if neither of those two options are successful in recovering your password, you'll have to contact Apple at 1-800-APL-CARE and have Apple reset the password for you by verifying some information.
• On this same page, if you can’t recall your password, there’s a link beneath Create an Apple ID, titled, “Find your Apple ID.” This will ask you for your name, email and prior email addresses in an effort to find anApple ID that may be linked to you.

3. Quick Tips on Purchasing Your Next Device

• Storage Space: Go larger than what your immediate needs are.

• It’s better to have the problem of too much space a year down the road than too little space.
• One of the biggest recurring problems that we see here in Burlington is that a year-or-two into the life of an iPad or iPhone, customers will lament that their storage is full. The reality is, when a device is full, your options become sparse particularly if you do not have another device to transfer data and information too.
• You’ve invested a great deal of money into your device. A $100 upgrade to double or potentially quadruple the storage space is well worth it, especially if you take a lot of pictures. For example, it only costs $100 more to upgrade from a 16GB iPhone or iPad to a 64GB model. I personally find that with my light use, the standard 16GB of space on my phone does not cut it.
• iOS takes up about 4GB of storage space. Therefore, if you purchase a 16GB device, you only have about 12GB of usable space.

• Buying WiFi vs. Cellular Devices (for iPad)

• Hear me out on this. You pay fair chunk of change for your cell phone and your cell phone’s data plan. You probably don’t use all of that data each month.
• You also can probably imagine a time where you'd want to use your iPad for Internet-based activities while outside of a WiFi network.
• iPads come in a cellular option, and in some cases, the cost of $10 dollars a month extra on your Verizon plan may be well worth it. Cellular capability cannot be added to an iPad after-the-fact, so it's important to assess whether you need cellular connectivity before purchasing the device.

• Assessing Your Personal Needs

• Buying a new device can be daunting. Here at CityMac, we pride ourselves on our ability to help you get setup with the device that is right for you. Our Apple Products Professionals can help shed light on what you are ultimately looking to get out of your device. From there, we'll match your needs with a hardware and service solution that fits. Stop on by one of our locations to get started!

4. Protecting Your New Device

• In order to prevent the fate that your previous device had, we highly reccomend the AppleCare+ Protection Plan. AppleCare+ is a 2-year protection plan that includes accidental damage coverage and 24/7 access to AppleCare support for technical help. Although AppleCare+ does not cover loss or theft (that's what Find My iPhone is for), it's a great way to keep your device protected from natural failure or accidental damage for two years. Here are some pointers with AppleCare+
• AppleCare+ can be purchased and registered within 60 days of the device's purchase date (we recommend purchasing AppleCare+ at the same time as your device, to make things simpler).
• AppleCare+ costs $99 and the service fee in case of replacing an accidentally damaged device is $79 for iPhone and $49 for iPad.
• You can make two total accidental damage claims under AppleCare+, one for each year of coverage.

5. What to Do with the Broken Device?

• We can help dispose of your old device for you. If you device is broken and you do not want to keep it, drop it on by one of our locations and we can safely recycle your device for you.