The iBook’s power adaptor went on the blink earlier today. And me with only ten minutes left to copy my work files over! No problem, I thought, with neophyte MacAddict glee – I’ll just pop over to the nearby swanky Apple Store and pick up a new one.
The G3 iBook AC adapter costs $68. Unless you want one from an Apple Store, the man at the “Genius Bar” said. In which case it costs $68 plus an $85 “service parts charge”.
To be fair, he did tell me I’d be better off ordering online, and offered to recharge my Mac there while I wandered around the Mall for a couple of hours. Disappointed by this level of genius, I declined, went home, ordered the part (two days delivery), and then hacked together a fix using a leatherman and gaffer-taped. I so wanted to be just a meek little consumer today, too.
Anyway, enough Jerry Pournelle-style whining. Here’s another Linux to MacOS X blog. Useful notes on identifying which OS version you have from the terminal, remotely mounting disk images, changing shells and the like. No permalinks though.