Yes, I just paid the difference, about $640.
I walked into the Corte Madera, California Apple Store with my 7 day old macbook pro, and my Toshiba USB 3.0 drive. I told a woman named "Barbara" that I was having a lot of screen glitches, and I would like to
* take advantage of the 14 day return policy
* have her give me the refund on an apple store gift card (rather than refund to my credit card which could take days to post)
* use the gift card to purchase the higher end macbook
* restore my time machine backup to the new machine
* once everything is successfully restored, then erase my personal files from the old machine.
So she processed all the refund paperwork, found me one of the higher end macbooks that had just come in that day. She took me back to the tables where they do system setups, and I began the setup restore process while she bustled around doing something or other, it looked like she was assigning me to one of the business representatives.
The initial setup that offers to take info from a time machine backup was unable to see my USB drive. It kept offering me to restore from "Backup-1" and then kept asking for a password for server "softwareupdate". I had previously during setup connected to the instore wifi network. It would not allow me into the server, neither with credentials, or as a guest.
Barbara found a genius named "Marc" who proceeded to look for youtube videos on how to do a time machine restore on the retina macbook.
Barbara returns a little bit later and starts saying because we were dealing with "my data", she was going to "make the call" that we had to move to a different place in back, and she proceeds to start forcing this move.. She starts to carry my new macbook with the USB drive still plugged into it. I stopped her immediately! "Uh, excuse me, you can't carry my backup drive around, especially not while it is running, that could cause a head crash."
(BTW, at this point, I had fully paid the difference in price for the new machine, so it was now mine. However I still had the old machine too due to not having finished the restore to the new machine.)
Barbara looked at me and reacted like I was an idiot for suggesting that carrying around a live spinning usb external drive was not a great idea. She again said because we were dealing with "my data", she needed to move things in back. I assume she meant back to the genius bar area, rather than letting me be in the setup area. I told her I would carry everything and follow her, but that I was very averse to risking moving my stuff while my backup drive was spinning.
She told me, no that I was not going to follow her, she was taking everything in the far back of the store where I am not allowed to be, for a technician to deal with.
I told her that she missed the whole point of my requests. I was not going to allow her to move my backup drive while spinning, and I was not going to disconnect it and let her carry it out of my sight. I was also not going to permit her to take my old machine out of my sight until I had erased my files from it. Again, she reacts like I am an idiot, and Marc helpfully suggests that we had not gotten to a point where we could safefuly eject my external hard drive, and she seemed to understand that. But she is still insisting that she is "making the call" to move us somewhere else.
I told her at this point "Ma'am, you are being incredibly annoying. Let me make the call and tell you exactly what is going to happen here with my data. Marc is assisting me with trying to get time machine to restore my data, you have seen that it is having a problem seeing my backup, and he is using one of the store's macbooks to research a solution. I thought you were asking us to move to the back of the store over to the genius bar area, which I don't mind doing. But I am not going to allow you to take my data out of my sight to some technician in a private area of the store. I have confidentiality agreements with my clients that does not permit me to allow their information to be out of my custody. I described this very clearly to you that until I see my data restored on the new laptop, you may not have the old laptop back, and I am not handing my backup drive, or the old laptop with my data, to someone behind the scenes to deal with. So we are going to stay right here and continuing working on my restore. You are being annoying to continue to insist on something other than that. So your services are no longer required. Please go away and find something else to do."
Barbara was obviously someone used to getting her way, and I dont think she was used to being dealt with in such an authoritative manner. She disappeared.
Another blue shirt sales assistant came over and started tidying up my boxes, etc., and I had to "Um, excuse me that is my old machine, we are not finished with it" her, and she desisted from her OCD organization.
Mark and I decided to complete the setup of my machine without the time machine backup, and then after the machine was setup, we then restored the time machine backup. Because my drive was protected with a password, the initial setup time machine restore was not able to see the drive because it never prompts for the password. Mark was very cool and stuck around while things were proceeding, as we needed to play with my account naming afterwards.
I asked Mark about the unrepairability of the new macs, and he said that there would probably be a lot more repairs that they wont be able to do in the store, it would be more on the exchange model. I asked him if in the future I would probably be able to do this same data restore / erase the old machine myself exercise, and he said that would probably be possible, while saying the let the techs in back do the transfer is the normal way, and I agreed that is probably a smoother experience for most people, but due to the confidentiality of my clients files, and he agrees that letting me do it myself was very reasonable, despite what Barbara might have thought.
After that, another tech was nice enough to put a thunderwire between the machines, and mount my old machines hard drive remotely, so that I could run disk utilities and do a zeroes erase of the old machine.
Total time, 1-2 hours..... Quite pleasant... Even the part of politely informing Barbara that her services were no longer required was kinda fun. 🙂
