Myke questions Stephen about his home network, then discusses the ups and downs of having an LLM power Siri. Also: a love letter to the iPhone Air and questions about Snap’s new AR glasses.
On Connected Pro, I trained Myke to be a technology historian. That’s the longer, ad-free version of the show that you should sign up for!
After yesterday’s post about the end of the Time Capsule, several people pointed me to James Chang’s project on GitHub to keep them running:
Apple AirPort Time Capsules only support AFP and SMB1. Apple removed AFP support in macOS 27 (and removed SMB1 support from macOS a long time ago). This is a modern Samba setup that runs directly on the Time Capsule itself; macOS 27 can connect to the Time Capsule as a network share, and use it for Time Machine backups.
This project has 2 parts:
- a fork of Samba 4, modified to work on the Apple Time Capsule
- the installers for the Samba binary, via python or the macOS GUI app.
This now fully works for all Time Capsules. The Time Capsule will run its own Samba 4.24.3 server, advertise itself over Bonjour (show up automatically in the “Network” folder on macOS), and accept authenticated SMB3 connections. You should then be able to open Finder, choose Connect to Server, and use a normal SMB URL instead of relying on Apple’s legacy stack.
I can’t speak to the patch’s effectiveness, but dang, I love that someone is out there keeping these things running.
Hartley Charlton at MacRumors:
macOS 27 Golden Gate removes AFP support, ending Time Machine compatibility with Time Capsule after nearly two decades, but a community project from a Microsoft engineer offers a potential workaround for owners not yet ready to move on.
The original Time Capsule was announced way back in 2008, in the same Macworld keynote as the first MacBook Air. From Apple at the time:
Time Capsule combines an 802.11n base station with a server grade hard disk in one small package. Simply plug it in, then easily set up automatic wireless backup for every Mac® in your house to a single Time Capsule with just a few clicks. Time Capsule offers the benefits of a full-featured 802.11n Wi-Fi base station, and comes in two models: a 500 gigabyte model for just $299 and a 1 terabyte model for just $499.
“Bring Time Capsule home, plug it in, click a few buttons on your Macs and voila—all the Macs in your house are being backed up automatically, every hour of every day,” said Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO. “With Time Capsule and Time Machine, all your irreplaceable photos, movies and documents are automatically protected and incredibly easy to retrieve if they are ever lost.”
The first version shared the same industrial design as the AirPort Extreme base station:
(Technically, it was slightly larger1 than the regular AirPort Extreme, but unless you had them side by side, most people wouldn’t notice.)
It did not take long for problems to start showing up, from kernel panics to dead power supplies.
It also did not take long before folks started cracking the things open and putting larger hard drives in them, which is a type of tinkering I truly miss in our modern age.
Over time, things settled down. In 2009, Apple updated the Time Capsule twice, ending the year with 1 TB and 2 TB models at the same $299 and $499 price points. Those updates also improved wireless performance for 802.11n clients through simultaneous dual-band and improved antennas.
In 2011, the Time Capsule was updated again, this time with 2 TB and 3 TB models at the same $299 and $499 prices.
In 2013, the entire AirPort line was overhauled, adopting a new form factor.
This time, the Time Capsule and AirPort Extreme looked identical at 3.85" x 3.85" x a somewhat unusual 6.6”. The new design was part of the move to 802.11ac, which Apple implemented with a total of six antennas inside.
2013 would prove to be the final update to these products. They sat for sale, unchanged, for five years. Then, the news came from Apple, to Rene Ritchie at iMore, who wrote:
Apple is ceasing production of its AirPort Express, AirPort Extreme, and AirPort Time Capsule Wi-Fi routers. I had a chance to speak to Apple briefly about the decision, and here’s the statement I was given:
“We’re discontinuing the Apple AirPort base station products. They will be available through Apple.com, Apple’s retail stores and Apple Authorized Resellers while supplies last.”
I understood the move at the time, but part of me still thinks it was a mistake for Apple to leave the Wi-Fi market right as mesh networking was becoming more common in the home. The AirPort’s ease of use would have been welcomed in the new landscape.
That aside, Apple’s cancellation of the hardware didn’t kill units in the field. I am sure there are folks who continue to run AirPort base stations today, but as Charlton wrote at MacRumors, the end has come for using a Time Capsule as a backup target. Notably, this move was announced a year ago.
The reason is that Apple is ending support for the Apple Filing Protocol. AFP can trace its roots back to System 6, which launched THIRTY EIGHT YEARS AGO. The more modern AFP that Apple is killing with Golden Gate was born with the advent of Mac OS X. For years, it was the protocol for sharing files between OS X machines, but it has since been superseded. Heck, it’s been 13 years since OS X Mavericks switched to SMB2 as its default file-sharing protocol.
Thankfully, you can still use Time Machine across a network. I have this set up for three MacBook users in my household, and it works well.
All of that said, the Time Caspule meeting its end isn’t surprising, even if it is a bit sad.
The 802.11n AirPort Extreme was 1.3" x 6.5" x 6.5" while the Time Capsule was 1.4" x 7.7" x 7.7" in size. ↩︎
SpaceX and the NAACP are in a legal battle over the use of turbines in Southaven, Mississippi, for powering the Colossus II data center in Memphis. This week, the Department of Justice got involved, as reported by Molly Taft at Wired:
In a filing, the agency sided with Elon Musk’s company, saying attempts to stop xAI from running the natural gas turbines “threatens American national, economic, and energy security by seeking to shut off the power supply for artificial-intelligence innovation that supports the Department of War’s military operations.”
The DOJ, along with xAI and the state of Mississippi, asked the court to dismiss the suit, filed by the NAACP in April.
Taft continues:
According to the DOJ memorandum, there are only four artificial intelligence models, including Grok, that “support mission-critical operations across Secret and Top-Secret classified networks.” A separate declaration filed by Cameron Stanley, the chief digital and artificial intelligence officer at the Department of Defense, details how the military relies on Grok’s Gov model to “support vital national security missions.” That includes using the model as part of recent strikes against Iran. Forcing xAI to stop running the gas turbines powering Colossus 2, Stanley says, “directly threatens ongoing national security interests.”
Samuel Hardiman at The Daily Memphian:
“In particular, if Colossus 2 is shut down because it cannot rely on power from the Stanton Road site, xAI would lose capacity to train and develop future improved versions of Grok,” Stanley wrote. “And if xAI is hindered from continuing to improve and upgrade Grok, including the Grok Gov Model, DoW’s ability to meet its national security mission and keep pace with adversaries will be impaired.”
Stanley said that xAI’s data centers in Memphis, including Colossus II, could be relied upon by the U.S. government in the event of another armed conflict or matter of national security.
It’s been a while since I’ve written about my home network, which I totally rebuilt after moving last year.
Here is my rack as it stands today:
I am all in on UniFi gear, as you can see from all the Apple-like aluminum hardware in that photo. From top to bottom, here is how things are set up:
I haven’t mentioned it yet, but the rack itself is actually two Toolless Mini Racks stacked together. Had I known I would need so much space, I would not have taken this route, but I got a great deal on the second one, so I stayed the course.
For Wi-Fi, I am using three U6 Enterprise APs. Wi-Fi 6E is plenty fast for my needs, and my first run at Wi-Fi 7 didn’t go super well. To have coverage outside, I’ve got a set of U6 Mesh APs outside — one for the front yard and one for the back.
UniFi’s management tools are pretty great. I can monitor my network, cameras, and NAS from anywhere in the world using either the web or a set of iOS applications.
A common complaint about UniFi is that its hardware often outpaces its software. For example, the ability to shut down and restart devices based on the UPS’s state was pretty broken until just recently. I also have an issue where the network dashboard retains the port assignments even after I move items to a different port.
That said, I love that I own my hardware, that my camera footage is stored locally at home, and that accessing it doesn’t require a subscription.
Is this pile of equipment overly complicated and expensive for a home user, even if that user works from home? Sure. But we nerdy folk like that sort of thing, and I certainly enjoy the stability and flexibility this setup offers me.
(Oh, the top of the rack houses a Mac mini, a Raspberry Pi running Home Assistant, and a UniFi PoE Smart Chime that goes off when someone rings my doorbell.)
There is basically no cell service at my house, so tethering if when Comcast goes out is not an option, sadly. ↩︎
WWDC26 has come and gone, and the guys have scores to pick, topics to discuss, and Liquid Glass sliders to adjust.
I’ve been emulating the Apple Lisa recently, and I was struck by how many of its UI strings were slightly or wholly different than what we’re used to.
It makes sense. Lisa came out in 1983 as Mac’s predecessor and really the first GUI that is directly linked to what we’re using today. Even though it borrowed things from work done at Xerox, tons of conventions were not established yet.
So, I thought it would be fun to actually take a closer look.
What follows is an in-depth look at the writing across the Lisa’s operating system. It’s clear it was designed at a time when everyone was still figuring out how to communicate what would happen when a user performed certain actions.
This is my favorite example from Marcin’s wonderful post:
From time to time, WWDC gives us a glimpse of what’s coming in the next year, like when Apple wanted developers to make sure their iOS apps could run on iPhones of different sizes.
As Dan Moren writes, this is one of those times, with nods to both touch-enabled Macs and a foldable iPhone.
This NASA document from 1979 is a wild look at how the space shuttle was pitched:
An unlikely looking flying machine stands on its tail above the watery, thicketed Florida sandscape. The time is the mid-1980s, and the Space Shuttle preparing for launch is one of a fleet of four that now plies routinely, about one round trip a week, between the United States and Earth orbit.
On average, the shuttle would fly once every three months or so, if you count the five years where it grounded for accident investigations after the Challenger and Columbia disasters in 1986 and 2003.
From that opening paragraph on, this document represents a vision that was never close to being realized. To be sure, the space shuttle’s legacy includes great achievements, including the Hubble Space Telescope and the International Space Station, but it could never live up to how it was talked about in the 1970s. It’s a heartbreaking look at a future never realized.
Samuel Hardiman at The Daily Memphian, following up on April’s news that xAI was pausing work on a water treatment plant that would take wastewater, clean it, and use it for cooling at its Colossus I site:
Memphis City Attorney Tannera Gibson said the company has recently assured the city that it would be completing the plant.
“The feelings are pretty positive and pretty strong based on recent conversations,” Gibson said.
Gibson made her comments after being questioned by members of the Memphis City Council about the paused plant.
“We’ve all gotten reassurances, but I want to hear those in public for everybody else,” Memphis City Council member Jerri Green said, referencing private conversations she’s had with SpaceX leadership. Green is a Democratic candidate for Tennessee governor.
Those conversations come after upheaval at SpaceX’s Memphis operations. Brent Mayo, the site’s former leader, is no longer with the company.
One of the first things I noticed after installing the macOS Golden Gate beta was the updated icon design. The colours are much bolder, several icons have been adjusted, and the refraction in the Liquid Glass effect has changed significantly, especially in icons like Journal.
There’s also a noticeable sharpness to the icons, along with a flattening of the Liquid Glass effect. I’m not sure yet whether this is simply an early-beta artifact or the intended final look. For example, while I really like the redesigned Finder icon, the sharp black edges around the nose currently feel a little unrefined.
Here is that change to the Finder icon:
Photos really shows the difference:
I think these look better basically across the board, and I think the change is even better on the iPhone.
Every year, the new version of macOS ships with at least one new default wallpaper. macOS 27 Golden Gate continues that tradition.
I like this wallpaper; it has some Mac OS 9 vibes.
These unofficial ones from Basic Apple Guy are also great.