[Satcomer]

I never have brought a sick Mac to my local Apple stores (yes i have 5 in my local area). When I blew a right speaker on my month old MacBook Pro I just called AppleCare and calmly explained the problem and my trouble shooting steps, he just ask for me to hold the phone over each speaker and then he just gave me a RA number plus overnight a box to send it in. Three days later I received the MacBook Pro back with the problem fixed. Two days later AppleCare called back to follow up.

I still have very good AppleCare experiences and I highly recommend them. If you just remember the old say "you catch more flies with honey..." and you will have no problem with them. I feel with telephone sites if you just stay calm and talk confident (not cocky though) you will get the best results.

With the Apple Store I feel that they probably get hundreds of dumb questions every day and from the Genius perspective you just another "stupid" legacy novice. AppleCare usually goes to trained AppleSpecialist.