Mihai Parparita
@persistent.info
910 followers 140 following 20 posts
Engineer at Sierra, formerly of Tailscale, Slack, Quip, Google Chrome and Google Reader.
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persistent.info
Classic Mac's OS file system innovations (resource forks, metadata) were often lost in transit on the Internet in 1995, and the same is true 30 years later with Infinite Mac.

I found a workaround using modern macOS's built-in .zip archives – a brief writeup: blog.persistent.info/2025/09/infi...
persistent.info
Yes, you can use a disk image URL (if it’s not from an already-allowed domain, let me know and I can add it)
persistent.info
Though most of the software is from the Macintosh Garden, so downloading it directly from there to your 9.2.2 machine may be even easier. You can browse around github.com/mihaip/infin... and see where items are loaded from.
infinite-mac/Library at main · mihaip/infinite-mac
A classic Mac loaded with everything you'd want. Contribute to mihaip/infinite-mac development by creating an account on GitHub.
github.com
persistent.info
Not directly (over the internet). Best option is to copy what you want to Saved HD and export that to a BlueSCSI image. www.youtube.com/watch?v=caHs... explains how.
BlueSCSI Bytes #1 - Infinite Mac
YouTube video by BlueSCSI
www.youtube.com
persistent.info
And for a behind the scenes look, there's a blog post: blog.persistent.info/2025/07/infi... (spoiler: Marcin was the instigator for all this, conducted over a months-long 100+ message email thread)
Infinite Mac Construction Set
blog.persistent.info
persistent.info
Another demo is my Infinite Monkey: infinitemac.org/monkey/

It lets OpenAI's or Anthropic's computer use models control an emulated Mac, based on your chat instructions.

This means that it's possible to run @simonwillison.net's "draw me a pelican riding a bicycle" test in 1984's MacPaint 1.0.
Emulated System 1.0 instance running MacPaint 1.0. It is being controlled by the OpenAI computer-use model, and attempting to draw a pelican riding a bicycle.
persistent.info
Infinite Mac can now be embedded into any website: infinitemac.org/embed

For a demonstration of what this can enable, see @aresluna.org's amazing "Frame of preference" article: aresluna.org/frame-of-pre...
Infinite Mac embedding dialog, allowing parameters of a instance to be customized and the resulting HTML to be copied. It uses the Platinum appearance from Mac OS 8.
Reposted by Mihai Parparita
aresluna.org
I wrote something new! It’s a UI design history essay about Mac’s Control Panel, and it uses emulation in some… maybe new and maybe interesting ways?

aresluna.org/frame-of-pre...
Frame of preference
A story of early Mac settings told by 10 emulators.
aresluna.org
persistent.info
blog.persistent.info/2025/03/infi... is a blog post with technical details (two separate emulators are involved) and the complete collection is at infinitemac.org?filter=macosx.
Infinite Mac OS X
blog.persistent.info
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Mac OS X was released on this day 24 years ago. On this anniversary, here it is on the web: infinitemac.org/2001/Mac%20O...

(technically 10.1, but that’s the first release that actually worked acceptably)
Mac OS X 10.1 running under Infinite Mac, showing the Finder, NetNewsWire Lite and Terminal.
persistent.info
More seriously, it's been great to be at Sierra from the start and get to influence the engineering culture in such a fundamental way. I know tech company blog posts can paint overly rosy pictures, but Gardening Week is genuinely one of my favorite parts about working here.
persistent.info
New company, new corporate blog for me to post on. sierra.ai/blog/gardeni... describes an engineering team ritual that we've developed. You can tell that it was not ghost-written because I got to cram in a lot of links to obscure articles.
Gardening Week: Evergreen Engineering
At Sierra, we value intensity and craftsmanship—Gardening Week is an investment in the long-term quality of our software.
sierra.ai
persistent.info
.patch also works if you need to email your change to a mailing list like it’s 1994 (more usefully, you can use `git apply` with it if you don’t want to be bothered with syncing remote branches)
persistent.info
Infinite Mac now has a “Macintosh Garden” drawer that allows one-click loading of any of the 20,000 items archived by that site.

I wrote up a brief post with some behind-the-scenes details: blog.persistent.info/2024/11/infi...
persistent.info
Thanks for continuing to experiment with this. I just listened to your Flipboard podcast interview -- I hadn't realized the "nerd HOA" contingent of the Fediverse went after you. The episode also reminded me check whether I was opted into Mastodon search (surprise, I was not).
persistent.info
Did @bradfitz.com and Maisem run out of Cyrillic letters for their views codegen shenanigans?
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I see the Sneakers Easter eggs have continued.
persistent.info
I’m still team “if you didn’t blog it, it didn’t happen”. So here’s a post about how much Quip technology is in Slack canvas (spoiler: a lot): https://blog.persistent.info/2023/07/slack-canvas-quip.html
Slack Canvas In The Streets, Quip In The Sheets
blog.persistent.info
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https://tailscale.dev/blog/battery-life describes battery life work we're doing at @tailscale.com. It's been a fun few months going beyond just Darwin spelunking to also hack on the Go standard library and explore different aggregation and visualization options.
Battery life instrumentation
We’ve added instrumentation and taking a more systematic approach to investigating battery life issues in the Tailscale mobile clients.
tailscale.dev