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 new industry group known as the AI Alliance believes that artificial intelligence models should be open-source, in contrast to the proprietary models developed by OpenAI and Google.
Meta, IBM, Intel, and NASA are just some of the organizations to sign up, believing that the approach offers three key benefits …
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A new Verizon Netflix and Max bundle is being offered to some customers, priced at just $10 per month – which essentially amounts to getting Netflix free with Max.
However, the bundle is limited to the ad-supported tiers of the streaming video services, and is only available to Verizon myPlan customers …
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A few Windows laptops are already powered by ARM CPUs rather than Intel ones, but we can expect to see a lot more in the future.
A new report says that Microsoft is accelerating efforts to overcome the current limitations of these, so that more PC brands can follow Apple’s example in using ARM chips …
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If you’ve ever sent or received photos or videos via WhatsApp, you’ve probably been frustrated by the awful quality of them. The chat app down-rezzes both to a truly appalling degree. But a new update to the iOS app fixes this by finally allowing images and videos to be shared at full quality.
The update is currently rolling out for the iOS app, but not yet for the Android one …
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A third round of Spotify layoffs this year will see some 1,500 employees lose their jobs in the run-up to the holidays. This follows the loss of 600 jobs at the start of the year, and several hundred more in the summer.
Spotify CEO Daniel Ek described the move as a ‘strategic reorientation,’ but the company’s fundamental problem remains unchanged …
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X is now hoping to sell more ads to small businesses, after owner Elon Musk told large ones like Apple and Disney to “go f*ck yourselves” …
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New market intelligence data suggests that the Apple Watch has seen its best ever Q3 shipments, up 7% year-on-year. The latest Apple Watch SE was credited with contributing “significantly” to that growth.
The biggest winner was Huawei, which this year emerged as a major player in the premium smartwatch market, taking many of its sales from Samsung …
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It was confirmed back in September that Apple will need to comply with antitrust requirements relating to app sales, and it seems most likely this will require the company to allow third-party app stores on iPhones. Microsoft has now indicated its intention to run one of these.
One key driver for the plan is likely Microsoft’s $69 billion acquisition of mobile gaming giant Activision Blizzard …
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After an earlier test, all Evernote free users now have their accounts limited to a single notebook containing just 50 notes.
While the company claims that most free users won’t be affected, that is almost certainly counting anyone who briefly trialled it before abandoning it. Almost no active users will fall within the new limits, effectively ending the free tier. The change will likely drive many to switch to Apple’s Notes …
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Apple’s annual support for World AIDS Day this year includes donating all proceeds from in-app purchases in three popular games.
Apple is also suggesting the (PRODUCT)RED Apple Watch Series 9 and Sport Band combo as a holiday gift …
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When Apple announced the Emergency SOS via Satellite service with the iPhone 14 line-up, it said at the time it would be free for the first two years – implying that it would require a paid subscription after that.
Earlier this month, Apple gave iPhone 14 owners an extra year. As things stand, then, both iPhone 14 and iPhone 15 owners will get free service until September 2025. After that, though, Apple has a problem …
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We learned earlier this month that a Reddit user had his iPhone 15 Pro Max order from Apple intercepted somewhere in the shipping process, and received a fake iPhone 15 Pro Max instead.
While he was sufficiently savvy to quickly realize that it wasn’t the real thing, we can now take a close look at the fake he likely received – with both hardware and iOS 17 software cloned …
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Three former Apple employees – two of them the ones who developed the Shortcuts app – are working on a new project: Bringing AI to the Mac.
The trio say their aim is to bring back some of the magic you used to feel when powering-up a personal computer back in the 80s – though they do also give a simple example of the kind of practical application they have in mind …
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If you use Chrome on Mac, it’s strongly recommended to update it immediately, as a security flaw discovered by Google is being actively exploited by attackers. It could potentially allow personal data to be extracted from your Mac (the same issue also affects Chrome on Windows and Linux).
Google says it is aware of at least one real-life case of the exploit being used by a bad actor …
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Update: Whether AirDrop is vulnerable to this exploit is unclear, but the odds are against it. See the update at the end.
Two newly-discovered Bluetooth security flaws allow attackers to hijack the connections of all devices using Bluetooth 4.2 to 5.4 inclusive – that is, all devices between late 2014 and now.
Six separate exploits have been demonstrated, allowing both device impersonations and man-in-the-middle attacks …
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A sketchy report claims that plans to design an in-house Apple 5G modem chip have been abandoned, after the company struggled to make progress with the project.
It follows a series of reports describing the challenges faced by the company, including one which suggested that the project was proving a “spectacular failure” …
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Berkshire Hathaway vice-chairman Charles T Munger died yesterday – the man Warren Buffett credited with the change of investment strategy which led to the conglomerate investing massively in AAPL …
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The advanced glass-plastic hybrid lens used in the iPhone 15 Pro Max is likely to be adopted by high-end Android phones, according to a new investment note by Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo.
The hybrid design brings some of the benefits of glass lenses to smartphones, which usually have to use plastic lenses …
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Bloomberg last month reported that Apple is working on a 2nd-gen Vision Pro headset which could reduce the price by around half, and that is today backed by a new supply-chain report.
The report says that the company is currently working on no fewer than four variants of a future headset, and that Apple is aiming to halve the manufacturing cost with one of these …
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Three new Ikea sensors are being added to the company’s smart home product line-up, each set to cost less than $10.
None of them natively support HomeKit, but the company says that all support the $69 Dirigera hub, and has promised that will be upgraded to Matter at some point …
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More than 100 brands have now ceased ads on X over antisemitic content allowed to propagate on the social network. They are following the example of companies like Apple and Disney, which made the decision early last week.
X itself had estimated that the financial hit could be around $11M, but the company’s own internal documents reveal that the total loss could be as high as $75M …
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A solid-state cooling system called AirJet was able to cool an M2 MacBook Air enough to keep with the M2 MacBook Pro when running a demanding benchmark test over a sustained period.
The bad news is that the system isn’t available for sale to consumers to retrofit, and it’s hardly likely that Apple will use it to remove a key differentiator between the two models – but the company behind the tech does think it could help Apple reduce the size of cooling fans in future MacBook Pro models …
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A chance decision made early next year turned out to pay dividends some 18 months later: An Apple Watch worn overnight proved incredibly helpful when dealing with a bout of insomnia.
Specifically, it helped me through a common vicious circle with insomnia: You can’t sleep, you get stressed about the fact that you’re not sleeping, which makes it harder to fall asleep …
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Two major dating app companies have suspended Instagram advertising after tests mimicking the behavior of child predators led to ads being served alongside sexually explicit material.
Other brands affected include Disney, Pizza Hut, and Walmart …
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