Sinister Pisces

A photo of a PowerBook 500 from 1994 running System 7.5.something with an AirTalk icon selected in the chooser, and a list of modern wireless networks to connect to, and out from behind the PowerBook is an AirTalk module which does LocalTalk over WiFi.

Pic from last March, but here have some of the fun of GlobalTalk.

Appletalk networks, routed across the planet, with zones just about anywhere. And here on a PowerBook 500 series, with an AirTalk adaptor for wireless localtalk bridged to my router Q605 out to others on the GlobalTalk network.

Sitting here, browsing YouTube on my #iPhone 13 mini with #iOS26 (26.3) installed … watching the screen flicker as I scroll through the video list.

I’ve had this since September 2021. I’ve never, ever seen a screen flicker until installing this trashfire of an OS. Fantastic. Installing 26.3.1 now.

Thoughts and Observations on the MacBook Neo The MacBook Neo is the first major new Mac aimed at the consumer market in the Apple Silicon era. It’s meant to make a dent — perhaps a minuscule dent in the universe, but a big dent in the Mac’s shar...

John Gruber @daringfireball.bsky.social has posted his thoughts on the #MacBookNeo here: daringfireball.net/2026/03/599_...

I think I would be remiss not to include a link to @512pixels.net’s actual write-up on this machine.

(And yes, as enthusiastic as I am, Apple loses points from me—an internet rando using fabulus NVME for an avatar—given that one of the connectors is USC-C 2.0. In 2026. What.

The Technical Differences Between the MacBook Neo and MacBook Air - 512 Pixels With a price point of $599 (or $499 for students!) Apple had to make some cuts when designing the MacBook Neo. The Neo’s screen is 13 inches, a full half inch smaller than that of the $1099 MacBook Ai...

The $599 #MacBookNeo looks like a spectacular machine for people who are just fine using a phone for all their computing needs, but want a bigger screen and keyboard and trackpad. It’s gonna be lit.

But, it’s not a #MacBookAir. @512pixels.net has the key differences: 512pixels.net/2026/03/the-...

Screenshot of an X post by Acyn quoting a CNN exchange. The text includes Blitzer asking about U.S. military losses if the war drags on, and Mullin responding that it is not a war and that the U.S. has not declared war on Iran. Below is a CNN split-screen showing Wolf Blitzer on the left and Senator Markwayne Mullin on the right, with a “BREAKING NEWS” banner reading: “W: TRUMP SAYS NEW IRANIAN LEADERS ‘WANT TO TALK.’”

This is absurd. If another country hit our top civilian and military leaders and wiped them out, then bombed 1,000 targets and threatened five more weeks of bombings, we'd say it was war. Get real or get out of here with this.

A year ago I got much more upset about the lack of options—worse, the lack of care—from Apple w/r/t 1st party network backup support, but after seeing the ongoing trashfire that is #MacOS 26, it seems a far more general lack of care.

#iOS 26 is also trying to melt my iPhone 13 mini, too. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Using what I already own, I think a combination of Time Machine & CarbonCopyCloner (from @bombichsoftware.bsky.social ) over SMB is going to get the the coverage I want for now. Eventually, I’ll splurge for ATTO’s #iSCSI initiator and shift to using that so the Mac can treat my NAS as local storage.

After reading all this and considering it overnight, it sounds like there’s really *not* a well-supported (by Apple) way to back a #MacOS system up over SMB. The #APFS filesystem, for all its great qualities, has really overcomplicated all this—so, it’s a shame Apple hasn’t made #TimeMachine superb.

backup – The Eclectic Light Company Posts about backup written by hoakley

@eclecticlight.co.web.brid.gy has some awesome articles on #MacOS backup in general (eclecticlight.co/tag/backup/) and Time Machine in particular (eclecticlight.co/tag/time-mac...).

I will spare y'all my 5 metric nerd-tons of salt over no native #iSCSI initiator being in MacOS, the only free option being capped to 20 MB/s, and the only paid option being so expensive, at over $200 per seat, that I’m not about to buy it just to test its performance.

#Windows11 has one built in.

Aside: We’re only stuck with using sparse bundle targets over SMB for Time Machine because Apple has refused for decades to properly implement network block storage—iSCSI (or, now, NVME-over-Fabric {e.g., NVME-over-TCP}—as a natively supported storage target.

Imagine real APFS over ethernet.

I used to think Time Machine was the best way to jump back weeks/months/more if I needed to restore an older version of a particular file, but given other options available (Carbon Copy Cloner, etc.) and the fact that my NAS uses ZFS, that might not be true at this point. More research needed.

If you’re still reading this thread, you might be wondering if it’s worth it to use Time Machine at all, given the caveats and limitations discussed in these articles.
@eclecticlight.co.web.brid.gy has published an article about that, too. :)

How big a backup store do you need? How large should the drive be to store all your backups for the next couple of years? Here’s how to work that out for Time Machine and other apps.

How much space does your (Time Machine, or other) backup store need? eclecticlight.co/2024/07/26/h...

How fast you should it go (and how to benchmark that): eclecticlight.co/2024/09/10/w...

Local Storage Speeds: eclecticlight.co/2024/12/18/i...

Planning complex Time Machine backups for efficiency Understand how TM backs up and how snapshots work to minimise the size of local snapshots and backups, and the time they take. How to ensure files in iCloud Drive are backed up properly.

I didn’t consider my setup particularly complex, but still learned several things I didn’t know from this: eclecticlight.co/2024/10/28/p...

In particular, how snapshots of large files between Time Machine backups can eat space unexpectly.

Where should you back up to? Consider the fidelity of backup copies, the speed of a backup method, and the risk of losing the contents of that backup. And test backups by restoring samples from them.

Local and remote backup strategies for your Mac using Time Machine and other tools: advantages, disadvantages, and considerations for overall backup strategy: eclecticlight.co/2024/06/07/w...

Check Time Machine backups in macOS Sequoia and Tahoe T2M2 is nearly 9 years old. Here’s a walk through its summary reports on Time Machine backups. and an outline of what you’ll see in its log extracts.

Apple doesn’t bother to expose useful health/error status messages about Time Machine backups, but luckily @eclecticlight.co.web.brid.gy offers T2M2 to monitor your backups. eclecticlight.co/2026/01/08/c...

I’m thrilled this software exists, but it absolutely should not be necessary.

Excluding folders and files from Time Machine, Spotlight, and iCloud Drive A brief reference to excluding items from being backed up, from Spotlight indexing their contents, and for them to be copied up to iCloud Drive.

Sometimes, Time Machine, #Spotlight, and #iCloud exclude certain files, and can be made to exclude other files: eclecticlight.co/2024/07/09/e...

(Carbon Copy Cloner also lists exclusions. Useful to compare to Time Machine. support.bombich.com/hc/en-us/art... )

How Time Machine backups can fail silently When I started my Mac up, its external backup storage was present as expected, but couldn’t be opened. It turned out that Time Machine had stopped backing up after 12:35 the previous day, but…

#MacOS #TimeMachine will fail silently:
eclecticlight.co/2026/01/15/h...

(I use various local and cloud backup solutions and Time Machine is the ONLY one that doesn’t just *scream* when the slightest something goes wrong.)

“If you do just set it and forget it, you will come to regret it."

How Time Machine backups can fail silently When I started my Mac up, its external backup storage was present as expected, but couldn’t be opened. It turned out that Time Machine had stopped backing up after 12:35 the previous day, but…

#Apple is determined to make a lot of core #MacOS technologies as opaque as possible. So, I always appreciate @eclecticlight.co.web.brid.gy ’s technical deep dives. Just in time for me to set up a new #TimeMachine backup flow, I remembered that they have some great articles on using it.
A thread.

5 WAYS TO BUY CHEAP HARD DRIVES in 2026 YouTube video by NASCompares

In the middle of the #rampocalypse — er, the #storagepocalypse — the #allTheHardwarepocalypse, Robbie over at @nascompares.bsky.social brings us a timely guide to buying #HDD disks without getting flagged by an AI somewhere for mandatory debt counseling
www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZkOB...

#homelab #nas

ALL THE CATS, EXPLAINED YouTube video by MinuteEarth

@minuteearth.bsky.social has delivered unto us All the #Cats (www.youtube.com/watch?v=UWag...) and All the #Dogs (www.youtube.com/watch?v=tuRl...).

Enjoy these lovely #animal #science explainers and the adorable #art.

Good vibes. Tomorrow is Friday for at least half of us.

From Acorn to ARM with Professor Steve Furber CBE YouTube video by The Retro Collective

@retrocollective.co.uk's spectacular series w/ Professor Steve Furber CBE, instrumental in hardware designs of #Acorn & #BBCMicro #microcomputers and the #ARM architecture.
1st hr: #retrocomputing
2nd hr: Building a brain with ARM.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=W2yD...
www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gh9p...

Why the First 4 Legend of Zelda Games Hit Different YouTube video by Triforce Times

youtu.be/id6yBI4HGA0?...

The first 4 #Zelda games were my childhood. They always felt different from the rest of the series. @triforcetimes.com nails why. It really was a different world, and it will never come again.

Luckily it never really left.

#retrogaming #loz #legendofzelda #nintendo #nes

Gurman: New Siri Might Be Delayed Again Link to: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-02-11/apple-s-ios-26-4-siri-update-runs-into-snags-in-internal-testing-ios-26-5-27

Via @daringfireball.bsky.social : daringfireball.net/linked/2026/...

#Apple might delay new #Siri. Again.

It hasn't been *that* long since Apple never pre-announced products *precisely* to avoid this.

Discarding that because The Market demanded Apple jump in the AI bounce-house isn't working out.

I’m not kidding. At the time, I really struggled to understand what #OpenDoc was meant to do for us. Now, three decades later, this article provides the clearest explanation I’ve seen.
It feels like a bizarre love child of #Hypercard and #HTML 2.0’s page layout/markup ethos.
#apple #retrocomputing

Teaching Apple Cyberdog 1.0 new tricks (featuring OpenDoc) In the distant nethermists of time, documents once briefly ruled the earth (or at least Mac OS), and to that end I managed to find a verrr...

#Apple #Cyberdog #OpenDoc web browser. Most confusing non-sock  launch.

OpenDoc: “a standardized compound document format” w/ "viewer and editor components [that] could be pulled…into…a document and maintain their own views and state…"
#Retrocomputing #Macintosh
oldvcr.blogspot.com/2023/10/teac...

When the Power Macintosh ran NetWare (featuring Wormhole and Cyberpunk) This entry and the software we'll demonstrate is in large part thanks to an anonymous Apple developer who was part of the NetWare team. Than...

I had subscriptions to MacUser and Macworld and Macweek during the 1990s and somehow missed that PowerMacs could, for a moment in time, run Novell Netware server software.

1990s tech experimentation was wild.

oldvcr.blogspot.com/2023/12/when...
#retrocomputing #macintosh #novell #netware

"Using the Program-to-Program Communication Toolbox (‘PPCToolbox'), and because AIX's throughput far exceeded anything the classic Mac OS ever could ever handle, an ANS could augment a whole bunch of Macs at once that didn't have to stop to do the work themselves.”

#retrocomputing #macintosh