Ben Lovejoy is a British technology writer who started his career on PC World and has written for dozens of computer and technology magazines, as well as numerous national newspapers, business and in-flight magazines. He has also written two technothriller novels , a romcom novel, and an SF novella series.
He is old enough to have owned the original Macintosh. He currently owns an M1 Max 16-inch MacBook Pro, a MacBook Air 11, 12.9-inch iPad Pro (LTE 256GB), iPhone 13 Pro Max (256GB), Dell Ultrawide 49-inch monitor, an Apple Watch (Series 4 WiFi) and multiple HomePods – he suspects it might be cheaper to have a cocaine habit than his addiction to all things anodised aluminum.
He thinks wires are evil and had a custom desk made to hide them, known as the OC Desk for obvious reasons.
He’s known for his op-ed and diary pieces, exploring his experience of Apple products over time, for a more rounded review:
He considers 1000 miles a good distance for a cycle ride and Chernobyl a suitable tourist destination. What can we say, he’s that kind of chap.
He speaks fluent English but only broken American, so please forgive any Anglicised spelling in his posts.
If @benlovejoy-ing him on twitter, please follow him first so that he can DM you if appropriate. If you have information you can pass on, you can also email him. If you would like to comment on one of his pieces, please do so in the comments – he does read them all.
A court is being asked to decide whether or not Meta has a legal obligation to allow the use of Unfollow Everything – a browser tool which effectively empties your Facebook feed.
The idea behind the tool is that instead of being sucked into an effectively endless feed of posts from every friend, group, and page you have ever followed, you get to proactively choose the posts you read …
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Songs from UMG artists are now again available to TikTok creators, after a dispute over royalty payments and AI policies was resolved.
This has seen the return of a lengthy list of artists, including Bad Bunny, Sting, The Weeknd, Alicia Keys, Drake, Billie Eilish, Kendrick Lamar, Rosalía, Harry Styles, Ariana Grande, Justin Bieber, Adele, U2, Elton John, Brandi Carlile, Coldplay, Bob Dylan, and Post Malone …
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The first ever Ring Pan-Tilt Indoor camera has today been announced, offering a full 360 degrees of horizontal coverage, with 160 degrees of vertical tilt.
The motorized base can be remotely controlled using the Ring app. The security camera comes with a manual privacy blind, and is available in five different colors …
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It’s clear that we’re going to see some exciting new Apple AI features this year, and the usual way for the company to announce major new iOS features would be to preview them at WWDC, and then launch them in September with the new iPhone line-up.
But there could be a couple of reasons to hope for some kind of preview of these new features on the new iPad Pro during the May 7 Let Loose Apple event …
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A little over a year ago, General Motors made what may well turn out to be one of its biggest gambles in many years: dropping support for CarPlay for all future EVs.
To most of us, the decision seemed insane, likely to result in a huge number of lost sales – but a new report suggests that the company felt it had little choice …
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AAPL Q2 earnings are set to be announced tomorrow, and the company had already warned that we should expect a year-on-year revenue drop of around $5B.
Analysts expect the same thing, and the outlook for Q3 isn’t expected to be any better, so investors will be listening carefully to any more clues Apple gives about what to expect further ahead …
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For some reason which utterly eludes me, 2024 seems to be the year of AI hardware. We’ve had the Humane AI Pin, the Rabbit R1, and even former Apple design chief Jony Ive reportedly seeking a billion-dollar bet for his own attempt.
Reviews of Humane were brutal, with those who tried it as unimpressed by its performance as they were bemused as to its purpose – and the Rabbit R1 isn’t faring too much better, with Marques Brownlee describing it as “barely reviewable” …
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A report earlier this month said that the color-infused back glass used on the non-Pro iPhone 15 models would be extended to the iPhone 16 Pro, and a new Weibo claim implies the same. This would bring new color options to the Pro and Pro Max.
Earlier reports have also suggested that we may see new color options for the titanium frame, as well as the glass back …
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Hugely popular video app TikTok could be banned in Europe as well as the US, according to remarks made by the president of the European Commission.
TikTok is also under two separate EU investigations, and President Biden last week signed a bill which would see the app banned in the US within nine months unless it is sold to an American company …
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A new report today says that Apple has created a ‘secretive’ advanced AI lab in Europe, and it’s this facility which is responsible for some of its most ground-breaking artificial intelligence work.
The same report suggests that most of Apple’s AI specialists have been poached from Google, though this isn’t a great surprise give the background of the Cupertino company’s AI chief …
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While shiny new features are lovely, what I find most frustrating with Apple OS updates is when a long-standing bug doesn’t get fixed … update after update after update.
For me, there is one that Mac bug which really stands out, that has been annoying me for literally years, and I completely fail to understand why the company hasn’t fixed it …
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Default passwords for smart home devices and wireless routers will have to be made stronger in order to comply with new cybersecurity laws in both the UK and EU …
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Being prompted to make an iPhone web browser choice in Europe has seen an uptick in the use of third-party apps, but not everyone is happy about it.
The EU itself is investigating whether Apple’s implementation of the antitrust requirement goes far enough, and developers of third-party browsers say the process gets one thing right, and two things wrong …
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Mark Gurman’s latest Power On newsletter suggests that Apple isn’t expected to launch a new Vision Pro (or Vision something) model until the end of 2026.
That follows another report last week, suggesting that demand for the spatial computer is far lower than Apple expected …
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The number of Netflix subscribers increased by 9.3M last quarter, to hit 270M globally – way higher than analysts had expected. However, the company says that it won’t (normally) reveal subscriber numbers in future …
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Police officers were allowed to force a suspect to use his thumbprint to unlock his phone, according to a federal court ruling.
However, it said the issue was a finely-judged one, and its ruling should not be interpreted to mean that this is lawful in all circumstances …
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A new Best Buy Vision Pro app uses augmented reality to let you see how things like big-screen TVs, furniture, kitchen appliances, and more would look in your home.
Once you find something you like, you can also buy it from within Vision Pro by opening the product page in Safari and completing the purchase there …
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Senator Elizabeth Warren has tweeted a somewhat bizarre one-minute video in which she says that green texts are “ruining relationships” and that this is “just one of the dirty tactics that Apple uses to keep a stranglehold on the smartphone market.”
Warren uses the to-camera piece to voice her support for the DOJ’s antitrust lawsuit against Apple, but has chosen a rather peculiar argument to do so …
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A smart MagSafe wallet could alert you if you leave a card behind after using it in a store, thanks to a simple approach described in a new Apple patent application.
The wallet could also better protect you against accidentally losing cards when carrying only one or two cards …
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Apple has pledged to buy US-made chips once TSMC’s Arizona plants come online, but the company may have to pay more for them.
TSMC’s chief exec has said that it plans to charge customers more for chips made outside of Taiwan, due to the higher production costs …
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Romance scams are getting a whole lot more convincing with the latest tactic: using two phones, one running a face-swap app, to conduct live video calls with victims …
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Almost 100,000 iPhones which Apple paid a contractor to scrap were instead stolen and shipped off to China, according to an in-depth report.
Apple sued the company concerned, but now appears to have abandoned the lawsuit, with the report suggesting this is to avoid publicly admitting that it orders the shredding of perfectly usable devices, in stark contrast to the company’s environmental stance …
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We’re expecting 2024 to be the year Apple builds generative AI features into iOS 18, and the company has announced a $250M investment to support ongoing work in this field. The Apple Singapore campus is growing from one building to three, to provide space for ‘new roles in AI and other key functions.’
Apple says that the expansion and refit will allow for greater collaboration between its growing teams in the country …
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SIM swaps are one of the biggest security threats we face, allowing criminals to access most services protected by two-factor authentication. The situation could be about to get even worse, as we learn of an apparent large-scale attempt to bribe T-Mobile and Verizon workers to facilitate the swaps.
While new rules and security features are supposed to make these attacks harder to pull off, now would be an excellent time to ensure your accounts are protected by authenticator apps rather than text messages …
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