More Power Than a Locomotive
09:11 Friday, 17 April 2026
Current Wx: Temp: 57.07°F Pressure: 1013hPa Humidity: 95% Wind: 8.97mph
Words: 753
You're probably over 60 if you get the title.
Alas.
So I'm up on the 14" M5 MBP. Kind of an ordeal. You'd think I'd be better at this by now.
It was supposed to be delivered between 11:30 and 1:30 yesterday. A little after noon, I checked the tracking and it had updated the delivery time to between 5:30 and 7:30. It arrived at 7:10 PM.
Of course.
A wiser man would have done some homework on the best way to use Migration Assistant to set up a new Mac. Let me just say that wifi ain't "the best way." It finished sometime after 6:00 AM this morning. Then the fun began.
I was running MacOS 26.5 on the M3 MBP, but I couldn't update the M5 MBP to 26.5 from within the initial setup, so I skipped that and proceeded. When it was finished, Migration Assistant on the M5 reported that a couple of files related to Siri could not be migrated. I figured it was probably due to something in the beta version of the OS.
I logged in and my usual startup items began launching and complaining that they were demos or needed a license or what have you. I launched Mail to find a license key for something, and it immediately crashed. I figured it may have had something to do with the 26.5 beta, so I updated to the beta. When I relaunched Mail, no problems.
I worried that the mail links I'd stored in Captain's Log would no longer work on the new machine. Why wouldn't they? I have no idea, I just worry about shit. So that's one of the first things I tested.
Well, the links did work. Sort of. It would open the email message in Mail, but only the header was displayed, not the body. I tried five different logged emails, all exhibited the same issue. I made a SWAG and selected "Rebuild" from the Mailbox menu.
From what I observed, there is no feedback to the user that anything is taking place. I waited a couple of minutes for something to appear, and then tried to quit Mail. The window closed, but the app remained open for some time after that, less than a minute though, not long.
I relaunched Mail and tried one of the links from Captain's Log and it opened the correct message in Mail and everything was displayed.
So far, so good. More license fun and games, so I tried using InfoClick to find the relevant email and no dice. Had to screw around a bit getting the index rebuilt, but that got sorted.
The real ordeal came with Backblaze. Maybe I'm just losing a step or too in my dotage, but their guidance for transferring a license to a new computer is opaque. I eventually figured it out, but it was an exercise in frustration that involved unnecessary jumping back and forth between the old machine and the new machine. Pro tip: You can do everything from the new machine, you just need to uninstall the BB app and then download and install the app on the new machine. I got the impression that you had to create an "Inherit Backup State" on the old Mac, so that the new app would recognize the backup as one that was "inheritable."
Nope. Just do that on the new machine.
Similarly CogSci's Hookmark has a cockamamie licensing scheme. The app launches on the M5 and I tried to check for any updates and the app complains that my "Basic" license has expired and it wants me to buy a new one. But I just bought a "Pro" license back in October, and I should be eligible for updates for a year. So I used their contact form to bitch about it.
Maybe I should just delete the app, because I don't use it very much (at all). I keep meaning to, but it's something I have to force myself to do until it becomes a habit, and I have too many other habits I guess. I can link to files, emails and URLs using AppleScript, and I mostly store those links in Captain's Log, so maybe I don't need Hookmark?
Anyway, for the time being it seems as though everything is back up and running on the new machine. I'm sure I'll encounter a few more surprises as I launch apps I don't use that often.
Until then, the beat goes on...
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