*Profound Sadness* My Airpods Max Stopped Working!

Two weeks ago, my APM headset (USB-C) stopped working.  They stopped pairing but I also noticed that they appeared to stop charging, as well.

This was disappointing, but I'd been having problems the past 6-8 months with pairing, so I expected them to eventually die.  Them being not-pairable was a blessing because that meant they were not usable...a broken headset would be something Apple can't ignore, right?  

I'd also been removing the pods from the headset harness to clean the hardware connections, which would temporarily fix the pairing issues (that eventually stopped fixing the issue).

So, I went to Apple's support pages to make an appointment at the nearest Apple Store.  That was intitially problematic, because the support page didn't consider a pairing issue to be an issue, so it wouldn't allow me to open a support case. (WTF!)  I tried a second time and it excepted my case - I was able to make an appointment.

I visited the Apple Store and told them what was going on.  They attempted to charge the headset (waited a few minutes after connecting it to power) and saw that it wasn't charging.  It still had power but was not charging.  They then checked to see if it would go into pairing mode - it would not.  They told me that they'd keep the headset and send it out to a service center.  They told me that they'd have it maybe five to seven days.

That seven days sucked.  I'm so used to my APMs that using any ohter headset sucked.  I have a Steel Series headset, a Skull Candy Venue, and a Beats Studio Pro...they all suck compared to the APM.  The next best thing was probably the Skull Candy.  The BSPs have better sound, but the headset is old and beat up - the band is slightly warped.

Seven days later, they called me and said I could come pick them up.  At the Apple Store, they told me that they had to replace the left-side pod, as it had the BT module (and power, I believe).  The new pod still had protective plastic on it.

It felt soooo good to be able to pair my APMs again, without jumping through hoops.

As well, none of this would've happened without AC+.  I have Apple Care + on the headset and it's something I wanted since the headset is not cheap.  I'm glad I did, because they might have fixed it but would've charged me if I didn't have AC+.  I paid $0 for this repair.

I Need to Think About Replacing My NAS, but...

I've an old NAS. It's a Buffalo TeraStation1400D with 12 TB of drive space.

I'd been using it to store snapshot backups of my Macs.  I recently bought a couple of new Mac systems and wanted to leverage the NAS a bit more and found that the NAS needs some legacy things that Apple is getting rid of very soon, so Time Machine will no longer work with my NAS.

I bought the TS1400D back in 2017 - hard to believe that was nine years ago!  It wasn't exactly cheap, either (a bit over $600).  At some point, I need to think about replacing my NAS, but this is a bad time to buy such things, as the prices of drives and memory are astoundingly high.

For now, the NAS will still work but I won't be able to use it with Time Machine.  I can get basic with this - buy an external drive enclosure to use with several largish HDDs that I have.  That'll get me by for a short while.  I just want to be able to back up at least one of my new Macs - both have 1 TB drives.  

I've functional spare 2 TB and 1 TB HDD drives.  I bought a 2 bay enclosure.  The plan is to put both in the enclosure.  Eventually, I'll find another 2 TB drive and swap out the 1TB drive - that way I may be able to configure them using RAID (the enclosure supports RAID).

I've a 2-bay drive dock but it's only supposed to be used for duplicating drives and acessing them for non-permanent tasks.  I frequently lose connectivity with that dock when using them with my Mini - I'm thinking maybe it's saturating the USB 3.0 connection when I use it.  Hopefully, I won't run into the same issue with the new enclosure.

We'll see how well the new drive works.

UPDATE (5/14/2026):  Both the 1-TB and 2-TB drives are bad.  This is sad situation.  I've two 500GB SSDs that I plan to set to RAID0 - Right now, I've a 500GB SSD and a 750 GB HDD in the 2-bay enclosure.  It works well!

UPDATE (5/16/2026):  I went ahead and bought a 4-TB HDD, specifically for Time Machine backups.  Why no SSD?  1) because they're super expensive right now, and, 2) because for TM backups, a mechanical drive will suffice...I don't need speed for backups.  I was surprised that I could find a new one for a decent price (Seagate, from Seagate, for $140).  It'll be here tomorrow.

UPDATE (6/17/2026):  I've been using the Seagate 4-TB HDD the past 30 days now.  It's working.  It's been uneventful, which is good.  It fit into the 2 bay enclosure without issue and I was immediately able to format the drive and use it.  I've a 750 GB HDD in the 2nd bay for regular file storage, too.  Eventually, I'll buy another 4-TB HDD to replace the 750 GB drive.