I want to agree, I really do. But I have had the same graphics corruption problem mentioned in the beginning of the post, and it most likely is a hardware fail

I want to agree, I really do. But I have had the same graphics corruption problem mentioned in the beginning of the post, and it most likely is a hardware failure. It took a few phone calls and 4 visits to the Apple Store (5 minutes away) spending a few hours waiting to talk to half a dozen different people because they didn't want to fix it. This was after I had video/pictures documenting the problem (complete with hardware serial #) but no reliable way to reproduce and it wasn't reproducing for them with their stress tests. All that clusterfuck for one repair. Plus it was a MacBook Air, nowhere near as big as an iMac. If I wasn't so fuming mad and I was just being logical, I would have picked up a new laptop instead of waiting. Oh wait, this was a laptop I had bought because the last MacBook I owned keeled over after repeated repairs and the store manager offered me 20% off this one for my troubles. Yesterday I went in to the store with my iPhone that had shattered glass all over the front and the genius looked at it and wanted to know what I wanted help with. No, really, you think I'm coming in for a software issue? It was so hard for me to assume he was being helpful rather than thick. There are times when I deal with really awesome Geniuses, and I have countless stories of how awesome the Genius Bar used to be (red phone and actual geniuses and all, when all the Apple Stores in the world were countable on one hand). But there are times Apple really sucks for support and I can't say I blame the OP for not wanting to go. I always think twice before I think about going to the Apple Store nowadays :(