Myke has a new laptop, Federico has thoughts on Siri AI, and Stephen has been graded. Also: Apple vs. OpenAI and a big day for Mario fans with feet.

When the project was announced, details about power generation were sparse. Today, we know a bit more. Will Conkling and Christopher Scott at Google:

Today, alongside local leaders, community members, and our partners at Cypress Creek Energy, we broke ground on what will be the largest solar facility in the United States — Steel River Energy Center in Mississippi County, Arkansas. While this landmark facility will be the largest solar and storage project across Google’s global portfolio to date, this historic milestone belongs first and foremost to the community in Mississippi County. The Steel River Energy Center will reinvest local workforce talent and industrial innovation right back into the state’s economy, creating lasting clean energy and economic benefits.

By working closely with local leaders and residents, we are ensuring that our growth directly supports our neighbors and strengthens the grid that powers Arkansas’ industrial steel manufacturing,¹ data centers and households alike.

Ground was broken this week on the solar site, complete with blue shovels:

Steve Dent at Engadget has more:

Google has struck a deal to purchase a major solar project’s entire electrical output to offset its fossil fuel emissions, The Financial Times reports. The search giant will take 100 percent of the initial output from Steel River Energy Center in Arkansas once it comes online in 2029, amounting to 1.6 gigawatts (GW) of solar power and 2GW of battery storage — enough to power 315,000 homes. 

Google will pay a fixed cost for the electricity from the solar plant, but won’t use it directly. Instead, it will draw from the grid powered by a mix of coal, nuclear, renewables and natural gas, along with its own on-site power (typically gas turbines and engines).

Energy from the Steel River Energy Center solar project will form part of that grid mix. Once completed, the project will supply 2.45GW of solar power and 2.9GWh of battery energy storage. The first two phases (out of three) received $3.5 billion in financing and prioritized US-manufactured steel and solar panels.

The final mix of power generation isn’t known, but I am glad to see Google investing in such a large renewable energy source to help offset its footprint in the region. Hopefully, this means Google will be much less reliant on gas turbines for power than its neighbors, but time will tell.

This news comes on the same day that folks in 13 states and the District of Columbia are seeing their electricity rates increase due to data center usage, as Ivan Penn reports:

PJM, the nation’s largest electrical grid operator, on Tuesday released results of an electricity auction that would add $6.3 billion in costs to the bills of millions of households and businesses within the next three years, an increase driven by the power demands of data centers.

[…]

In a statement, PJM said data centers were increasing electricity demand throughout the region.

“These auction results show that demand for electricity continues to grow faster than electricity supply,” David Mills, president and chief executive at PJM, said in an announcement of the auction results. “We are working with government and industry leaders on multiple fronts to restore that balance by bringing on new generation as fast as possible and managing the growth of new load on the grid.”

Elon Musk has acquired Jacksonville-based APR Energy, according to a Federal Trade Commission filing that surfaced the deal weeks after it closed with no public statement from either side.

The FTC’s early termination notice, transaction number 20261350 and dated May 14, lists Elon Musk as the acquiring party and CF APR Super Holdings LLC as the acquired party, with New APR Energy, LLC listed as the acquired entity.

It also shows the transaction was granted early termination, meaning no further antitrust review was required before the deal could close.

No terms were disclosed in the FTC notice itself, but the price tag came into focus through a separate filing.

That separate filing comes from Duos Technologies Group Inc, which recently disclosed a $50 million sales price for its 5% equity stake in APR Energy.

That puts the deal at roughly $1 billion. As far as I can tell, APR Energy has not confirmed its change in ownership.

That is a bunch of money, so what is APR Energy? Let’s turn to its website, which says:

You want reliable power today – we have the assets available to meet your needs, including one of the world’s largest mobile gas turbine fleets, comprehensive and customizable balance of plant equipment, and a team of experts ready to handle your build from end to end.

From emergency power for compromised utilities to bridging-to-permanent power for data centers, we’re ready to rapidly deploy the turnkey power solution you need, when you need it, and to your specifications.

Bridging is the phase in which SpaceXAI’s data centers are currently operating. The grid can’t supply the sites with all the power they need, so these turbines are installed to keep things running. In the case of SpaceXAI’s second site in Memphis, it’s hard to see how the grid could supply enough power any time soon, if ever.

As you can see in these photos, they are built on large trailers and are therefore considered mobile.

This is the same technology at the heart of many debates — and lawsuits — concerning SpaceXAI’s presence in Memphis, as Fred Lambert sums up at Electrek:

APR doesn’t run a traditional power plant. It deploys trailer-mounted gas turbines and reciprocating diesel and natural gas engines that can reach full power in under 10 minutes and be installed in days rather than the years it takes to permit and build a fixed plant. The fuel is natural gas and diesel. This is fossil-fuel combustion, packaged to move.

It’s the same technology Musk has already been running — controversially — to keep Grok online.

At various times over the last couple of years, SpaceXAI has been accused of running more gas turbines than allowed. The company points out that they are mobile and thus temporary, claiming they are exempt from a bunch of pesky environmental regulations.

That was shot down by the EPA back in January, but the company has continued to rely on a fleet of turbines to keep its data centers¹ running.

It is unclear whether any of APR’s hardware is in use by SpaceXAI. The company is not listed on the company’s projects page, and the turbine models called out in a 2025 report by Samuel Hardiman don’t seem to line up with the GE TM2500 and Mitsubishi FT8 turbines listed on APR’s website.²

Regardless of what companies are currently on the ground, this is a clear sign that Musk and SpaceXAI continue to view gas turbines as an acceptable means of powering AI data centers.

OpenAI’s much-anticipated push into consumer devices is slated to begin with a mobile, screen-free smart speaker designed to be a new type of home computer for the AI era, according to people familiar with the matter.

The product — still under development — is meant to serve as a humanlike AI companion that lives in the home, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the project hasn’t been announced. It will help control smart-home appliances, play media, answer questions, respond to messages and tap into the range of capabilities offered by OpenAI’s ChatGPT, they said.

Mark Gurman, writing on social media:

Amid Apple’s trade secret lawsuit, the iPhone maker has nothing like it on the market.

A smart speaker. Why did it have to be smart speakers?

Federico is at the beach, Myke questions his iPhone’s future, and Stephen wears watches. Then: a whole stack of Q&A items.

In macOS 28 and later, the Mac OS Extended file system format will be supported only for volumes (disks and other storage devices) that aren’t encrypted. For future macOS compatibility, either decrypt or reformat any encrypted Mac OS Extended volumes.

macOS 28 and later will continue to support unencrypted volumes that use Mac OS Extended format. Mac OS Extended is also known as HFS Plus (or HFS+).

Time goes marching on.

A distraction-free Markdown writing app for classic 68k Macintosh computers (System 6/7), built to run from a BlueSCSI device on a Mac Plus or similar compact Mac.

He has a video walking through it, including how it was built (with the help of Claude Code) and how you can move data on and off older machines:

The Apple Watch is rumored to undergo some big changes, Safari is gaining MCP support, and the Rickies may have accidentally created a black hole.

Several years ago, I ran a series of Kickstarter campaigns highlighting important dates in Apple’s history with three different wall calendars.

There were also digital versions of the calendars that folks could subscribe to in Apple Calendar, Fantastical, etc.

Today, I have some news about that part of the project:

1. Backers of the three Kickstarters are getting access to updated digital versions of the particular calendar they backed. If you’re in that crowd, be on the lookout for a Kickstarter message with details. These calendars haven’t been updated since publication, so there’s a lot of new stuff in there. This is a one-time update as a thank-you to everyone who backed the campaigns.
2. I have combined dates from all three calendars into a new Apple History Calendar that is for sale now as a one-time $10 purchase. I will be updating the calendar each month with new dates, so setting it up as a subscription in your calendar application means new dates will flow in automatically.

I am so excited to have found a way to keep the Apple History Calendar project going after all this time, and I would love for you to check it out.

As a bonus, you can also get a copy of my book Aqua & Bondi. It covers the iMac G3 and the transition to Mac OS X. If you pick up both, you’ll get 25% off your entire order.

On July 2, 1996, EveryMac.com launched.

Thirty years is a long time – and a great deal has changed since then – but what has not changed is that EveryMac.com has been there to provide you with detailed info on every Mac from the original 128k to the current line. Thank you very much for your support through the years.

There are a bunch of ways to support EveryMac, and its anniversary prompted me to chip in to help keep the lights on at a very important resource.

I am a huge fan of the site’s comparison charts, which make it easy to see how a particular model evolved over time:

The Honda Element could make a comeback, at least according to a new report by Automotive News. Honda killed the once-popular SUV in 2011 after years of sliding sales, but a resurgence in off-road-capable vehicles and a dearth of affordable models are spurring the boxy Element’s revival. 

Car and Driver reached out to Honda for comment, and a spokesperson shared this statement: The Honda Element has maintained a cult following since it was discontinued in 2011, and hopes for its possible return continue to circulate online. We sincerely appreciate the enthusiasm for the Element, but we are not going to engage in speculation about our future product plans.

We owned a 2007 Element for several years. Because it was so weird, it was a lot of fun. It was also surprisingly useful. I was a full-time consultant at the time, and would use it to haul pallets of MacBooks between the office and the K-12 schools we serviced. Here it is, in a very 2009 photo:

It was not perfect, though. We ended up trading it in when we bought our first minivan, as the suicide doors made getting kids in and out of car seats difficult in parking lots. Even though one hasn’t been in my driveway for a long time, I always take a second look when I see one in traffic.

Om Malik passed away on June 24, 2026, at Stanford Hospital after a long health journey with his heart. He was surrounded by family and friends.

I’ve read Om’s writing since before starting this site over 17 years ago. It is hard to believe he won’t be lighting up my RSS reader anymore.

Apple has increased prices across its Mac and iPad lines, the guys are all on iOS 27 Beta 2, and the Bill of Rickies is amended.

Macs

iPads

Other

Additionally, many upper-level SKUs saw increases. The Mac mini with M4 Pro got a $200 bump to $1,599, while the M5 Max MacBook Pro jumped from $3,599 to $4,099. As expected, increases really stack up when you start configuring higher-end options like larger SSDs and additional unified memory.

Apple addressed the increases to The Wall Street Journal’s Rolfe Winkler:

“We have now reached a point where we need to begin raising prices,” [Apple] said in the statement. “We have never seen a component price increase this much, this quickly.”

Driven by surging demand from AI hyperscalers, the prices of memory chips, called DRAM, and storage chips, called NAND, have both quadrupled over the past 12 months, according to research firm TechInsights, which projects those prices to keep rising into next year.

Mark Gurman at Bloomberg:

An Apple spokesperson said that “the rapid expansion of AI data centers has created an extraordinary surge in demand for memory and storage” and that the company has “never seen a component price increase this much, this quickly.”

Apple added it has “shielded our customers from these increases so far, but we have now reached a point where we need to begin raising prices on a number of products including today’s increases for iPad and Mac.” “We know this is not welcome news, and we are working tirelessly to find solutions,” it said.

Casey Newton:

Consumer electronics getting significantly more expensive due to the AI industry may accelerate the backlash even faster than the data center buildout.

Notably, Apple was able to keep the iPhone at its existing price points.¹ I suppose time will tell if Apple can hold the line there.

I won a steak dinner from my Dithering cohost Ben Thompson, betting that Apple would not raise the prices on RAM when they introduced the M5 Pro and M5 Max MacBook Pros in March, largely on the basis that Apple considers the pricing part of the product’s brand. For the same reason, I also do not think they’re going to raise the prices of existing products mid-cycle. I think Cook’s warning is about the fall, starting with the iPhones 18 Pro and the folding “Ultra” in September, and he issued the warning months early just to make the bad news “old news” by the time September gets here.

But unlike with the MacBook Pros in March, I wouldn’t bet more than a beverage on my hunch here. However out of character it would be for Apple to raise prices midway through product cycles, the global RAM shortage is unprecedented. I wouldn’t be surprised if Apple pushes price increases moments after I hit “Publish” on this post. (I’m checking right now, before I hit the button, in fact.)

I agree; it would be very unusual for Apple to raise prices at the end of an iPhone cycle. Part of me thinks Apple will do it anyway to provide some cover for John Ternus’ first product keynote as CEO. Having the outgoing guy take the heat for a price increase seems wise to me, but perhaps the company thinks that a rare Tim Cook interview was enough.

Had a productive meeting with SpaceXAI President Michael Nicolls on Monday.

In the meeting they committed to resuming construction on the recycled wastewater treatment facility no later than Q1 2027.

This facility will offset water usage from both SpaceXAI and TVA. Our engagement that led to this commitment will continue until the facility is complete.

Samuel Hardiman, for The Daily Memphian:

The facility was expected to treat wastewater from the City of Memphis’ nearby TE Maxson Wastewater Treatment Plant and turn it into a suitable industrial coolant, replacing the hundreds of thousands of gallons of freshwater the company uses each day. In February, it used 840,000 gallons of water a day, according to bills obtained by Protect Our Aquifer and provided to The Daily Memphian.

The land for the water treatment plant was purchased in June 2025, with ground being broken in October of that year. You’d think one of the world’s most valuable companies could move more quickly.

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!

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.

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.

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.

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:

• Cable Modem: My Comcast connection comes straight into this and is then passed to my network over a 2.5 GbE Ethernet connection.
• Dream Machine Special Edition: This is my gateway. In the UniFi world, this is what manages the entire network, including routing, the firewall, content filters, and more. The Dream Machine can be used to run Protect, UniFi’s home security and camera system, and even record footage with its built-in hard drive, but I have a standalone Protect box further down the stack, as when I initially built this out, I was not using a gateway with its own storage. The Dream Machine uses Comcast as its upstream Internet connection, but it can fail over to my backup ISP — a super-slow AT&T DSL connection.¹ That green fiber optic cable runs to a workshop off my garage, where I have a secondary switch running two of my cameras and one wireless access point.
• A 24-port patch panel with a hodgepodge of keystones.
• My main switch is a Pro Max 24 PoE. Yes, its name is terrible and a rip-off of Apple’s terrible naming, but it’s a heck of a switch. I use its two SFP ports to connect it to the Dream Machine and to my NAS. It has a handful of 2.5 GbE ports that I use for connections at my desk and for my access points. The colors correspond to the connected device’s link speed, making it easy to see at a glance if something is acting up.
• Below the switch is my UNVR, or network video recorder. I have three cameras, and all their footage is stored locally on this device. This is overkill for just three cameras, but I already had it (and had opened it up to install quieter fans), so it is here to stay.
• The next two rack units are a bit deceiving. At the front of the rack is a mere placeholder, but at the back is Unifi’s Power Distribution Pro, which is basically a networked power strip. When paired with the UPS at the bottom of the rack, the Dream Machine can shut down network equipment individually if the power is out and the UPS is nearly depleted. I could do this with just the UPS, but it doesn’t have enough battery-backed outlets for the rest of the gear in the rack, so I run everything through the PDU Pro instead.
• That box full of hard drives is the UNAS Pro, UniFi’s older rack-mountable NAS product. It lacks some of the niceties of UniFi’s newer offerings (like the ability to use an SSD as a cache to speed up file access), but it works well enough for what I need. I should note that this is not something like a Synology that can run things like Docker containers. I just needed a bunch of storage on my network.

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.)

WWDC26 has come and gone, and the guys have scores to pick, topics to discuss, and Liquid Glass sliders to adjust.