But then, my mother's iMac was out of warranty and we weren't willing to pay some dweeb at the "local" (1.25 hours away) computer shop to do something I could do myself.

The glass is the easy part: it's magnetic. Set it on a lint-free towel, cover it with another one, and it's good.

The LCD panel is a bit harder only because you can't really disconnect it completely and will need a place to prop it during the rest of the surgery.

The hard parts are the 80 brazilian screws of differing sizes and formats, the fiddly breakable connectors, and the various won't-restick-no-matter-what-you-do tapes and putties.

Would it seriously hurt Apple that much to put the hard drive in a slide connector off the side (or even the bottom!) behind a fancy screwless plate?

I can't stand Unity, but then again I no longer use Linux as a UI OS so who cares not I.