I think this may have been lost in my post: the Genius at the Apple Store was clear and insistent when they diagnosed the issue with the laptop that the custome

I think this may have been lost in my post: the Genius at the Apple Store was clear and insistent when they diagnosed the issue with the laptop that the customer was at fault. It is my suspicion that Apple is trying to push blame onto the customer and I think that is unfair at least in some situations. It reminds me of the extended warranty on phones; you get one because in the course of regular use you might drop the phone. In this case Apple has made these machines deliberately brittle and now you really need to get that extended warranty because in the course of regular use you might sneeze on the keyboard or drop crumbs of something onto it. They also need to get work done ASAP and while we have spare Dell laptops on-hand, we don't have any spare MacBooks. I expect them to be reimbursed eventually, there is an insurance policy that covers lost or damaged laptops.