A Review of the AirPods Max, Lessons from Chaos, Links to New Apple Gear Reviews, and More

March 25, 2022

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AirPods Max: A Parent’s Point of View »

We have two little girls; a 4-year-old and a 2-year-old. Both are more like 15- and 13-year-olds. Our house is full of pinks, purples, dresses, dolls and Lego Duplo. It’s the Madhouse on Madison here most nights.

For us, it’s been the Madhouse since day one. Our oldest is not a particularly strong sleeper. We were new parents and over-analytical at the wrong times. Sleep training didn’t happen at the right time. Maybe we got up and consoled her too often. Who knows.

Which isn’t to say sleep is at a premium in our house. It just means we sleep a full night maybe once a week.

This has ramifications on other parts of life. When the kiddos are sleeping, you need to let them sleep. You can’t have loud volumes pumping through the house. You can’t have bright flash sequences lighting up the living room if that room shines into a bedroom. (My daughter insists on her bedroom door being open all night. I know…)

Fortunately, Apple is there for my wife and I. So long as I want to spend oodles of money on a problem, Apple has a solution.

The solution: AirPods Max.

Learning Productivity Lessons in the Midst of Chaos »

In June of 2021, my wife and I bought a five-acre property in the country that is one part dream come true and one part nightmare. The dream is the property itself. It has woods, hiking trails, 100+ year-old oak trees, more than a dozen fruit trees, outbuildings, the works. The nightmare (though that’s a tad strong here) is the house itself. It was built in 1895 and has had many remodels, additions, and bad, temporary fixes.

The obvious goal here was to remodel the house. However, there was a tight deadline. We had just over three months to tear out two load-bearing walls, remove any lead and asbestos, rewire two-thirds of the outlets/lights, fix sloping floors, rebuild the kitchen, and make it livable again. So the work began.

With a project of this scale and a really short timeframe, I needed a way to manage it in detail or we would end up moving into a house with no heat, no toilet, no kitchen, and no water.

Big Update to Our Roam vs. Obsidian Guide »

A lot has changed in the last year or so since we first published our side-by-side comparison of Obsidian and Roam Research. So we went back and updated everything to reflect the major changes in the apps, including:

Obsidian’s iOS app
Roam’s end-to-end encryption
Obsidian’s Live Preview feature
and a whole lot more

We also added a new competitor, LogSeq, which is an interesting Roam-like app that lets users control their library locally on their computer. It does a lot of things just like Roam Research, but has a few additional niceties like an improved Graph View and the ability to install plugins and themes.

One thing is for sure: there are a lot of great options now for connected note-takers.

If you’re wondering which one is for you, head on over to the updated guide. We even tweaked the PKM quiz to help you pick the right one for your note-taking needs.

Is your productivity busted?

If you feel like you could use a tuneup for how you manage your tasks and your time, get access to our Productivity Workshop.

Shawn Blanc (founder of The Sweet Setup) covers:

1. The four most common symptoms of a busted productivity workflow
2. What you can do to overcome them
3. How to improve your approach to managing and organizing your tasks.

You’ll also get the downloadable templates and cheatsheets.

GET ACCESS

Is your productivity busted?

Interesting Links From Our Friends and Around the Web »