Imagine my dismay when I discovered that my Apple Remote had taken a ride through the clothes washer and dryer a couple of weeks ago… As you may imagine, this journey rendered the remote inoperative and useless (albeit totally dry).
Additionally, searching on the Apple Store was a bit more depressing since the device is evidently no longer available… yikes.
eBay to the Rescue
Thankfully there’s eBay.
After nosing around a bit I was able to find several vendors who had very reasonable prices on basically brand-new remotes. I think mine ended up being $6.99 USD.
At any rate, it arrived today and I was very pleased to try it out while listening to iTunes and it works perfectly. At that rate I probably should have purchased a few extras just in case this happens again…
Let’s hope not.
Strange Behavior
My next task was to resolve a very strange and annoying problem if you have more than one Mac in the proximity while using the remote. This happened to me while on vacation — the remote was pointed at my MacBook Pro, but in addition to controlling it, my wife’s MacBook was also responding to the controller, starting and stopping iTunes while a movie was playing on my computer. Very interesting.
Thankfully it is possible to pair up your remote to your computer, and I’ve already paired the new remote with my laptop and will do the same with our other MacBook and its respective controller…
Whew!