Beats Solo 4: Finally, the Headphones for Me

• Devon

I have a long, sad history of trying to find headphones that work for me. Since the introduction of the original AirPods in 2016, I’ve longed to have the same Apple ecosystem integrations in an on-ear or over-ear form factor. I thought I’d found what I was looking for in 2019’s Beats Solo Pro, but when I wore them, they gave me an awful headache. I tried again the following year with AirPods Max and experienced the same discomfort. Despite how great they sounded and how cool they were, they just didn’t work for me, so I somberly returned them and resigned myself to life as an earbuds user.

When the fourth-generation Beats Solo headphones were released earlier this year, they caught my eye, but I was hesitant to dip my toe back into the wireless headphone waters. I’d been burned before. And as Ted Lasso says, “It’s the hope that kills you.” Despite my trepidation, I made a mental note of them and, crucially, mentioned to my wife that I was considering giving headphones another go.

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How I’m Using the Collections App: Budgeting and a Creativity Log

• Devon

This is the second entry in a two-part series on different uses case I’ve found for the Collections database app in my daily life. If you haven’t yet read the first half of the series, check it out in MacStories Weekly Issue 423 for an introduction to Collections, its basic concepts, and a couple of other ways that I’m using it.

Personal Budget

After finishing up my MacStories article link-saver and car maintenance log, I decided to tackle an area of my life that is very important to me: budgeting. I am an unashamed personal finance nerd, and I like to keep my accounts balanced to the penny using the envelope budgeting method. I’ve tried nearly every budgeting app out there and found most of them incompatible with the way I manage my money. (Is the theme of this series that I’m too picky about apps?) I don’t want pre-defined categories or AI to help me; just let me create budget lines, fill them, and spend from them, please.

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Creating a Timeline of My Life with Everlog

• Devon

I’ve always known that journaling was good for me, but doing it consistently was something I used to really struggle with. The last time I decided to restart my journaling practice – after a number of failed attempts, mind you – I turned to Wessley Roche’s Everlog, and it stuck. I’ve written in the app daily for over two years now and amassed nearly 2,000 entries.

Why did this particular approach to journaling click for me when others in the past haven’t? I can’t say for sure. I would like to think it has something to do with self-discipline and personal growth, but it could just as easily be attributed to how much I enjoy using Everlog. Either way, I’m thankful that it worked; journaling has become a great way for me to reflect and decompress at the end of each day.

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