When I first switched to Mac from Windows I was really fascinated by the fact that generally you _could_ figure things out on your own and fix your system by ju

When I first switched to Mac from Windows I was really fascinated by the fact that generally you _could_ figure things out on your own and fix your system by just examining the filesystem structure (in recovery root shell). E.g. I once decided I want to try out Mac OS X server on my laptop and for whatever reason the install process got stuck, preventing me from logging in. To fix it I've just rebooted in recovery mode, found some lock file present (something like server-install.lock), removed it and then got my desktop back :). I was able to do it because the naming conventions in the OS filesystem were so easy to understand. I've then discovered that my "Sharing" preferences pane also disappeared and I was able to find it in the system folders, renamed to "Sharing.prefpane-stowed-away" or something like this. I've removed the unnecessary suffix and got my prefpane back. I don't think modern macOS is as easy to tinker with anymore and I never had the need to fix it manually ever again either — but it felt incredibly cool to be able to fix it myself without any manual or even internet access for that matter.