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 several books, and creates occasional videos.
He is old enough to have owned the original Macintosh. He currently owns an M1 Max 16-inch MacBook Pro, an M1 13-inch MacBook Air, an iPad mini, an iPhone 16 Pro Max, and multiple HomePods. He suspects it might be cheaper to have a cocaine habit than his addiction to all things anodised aluminum.
He’s known for his op-ed and diary pieces, exploring his experience of Apple products over time, for a more rounded review:
He speaks fluent English but only broken American, so please forgive any Anglicised spelling in his posts.
He gets a lot of emails and can’t possibly reply to them all. If you would like to comment on one of his pieces, please do so in the comments – he does read them all.
Our editor-in-chief Chance Miller has been testing the MacBook Neo for just under a week, and his review described it as “a truly great Mac at an unbelievable price.” Other reviewers clearly share his view. While there are of course compromises, everyone agrees that this machine leaves all of the Windows competition in the dust …
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It’s been predicted that Apple could sell four to five million MacBook Neo machines this year, with even hardcore Windows fans seeing the appeal of switching.
A new market intelligence report today suggests that the new machine could become even more attractive later this year as competing laptops become more expensive …
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Apple is pitching the MacBook Neo at people who’ve never owned a Mac before, and it’s reaching out to them in the place it thinks it will find this new generation of potential Mac users: TikTok.
The company has been running a series of quirky ads on the video streaming platform, some of them featuring an adorable little Finder guy …
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Apple last year shifted a substantial amount of iPhone production outside of China despite the fact that it has to pay a premium to do so.
The company reportedly hit a significant milestone, reaching the halfway point in its objective to split iPhone production equally between China and India …
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Attitudes to the hugely delayed launch of the new Siri seemed to be split between frustration and resignation. Apple promoted the more intelligent voice assistant in a deleted video ad for the iPhone 16, but it appears it may officially launch alongside the iPhone 18.
Amazon’s Alexa+ service initially looked to be well ahead of Apple, but it too was delayed – and also appears to be failing to deliver on its promises …
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Apple hardware design lead Molly Anderson said that the company started from scratch when it came to the process for manufacturing the new MacBook Neo, resulting in far more efficient use of materials.
The company is also reportedly looking to adopt an extremely challenging manufacturing technique for the aluminum chassis of future iPhones and Apple Watch models …
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Apple said that it wanted the new MacBook Neo to be seen as a fun new addition to the Mac lineup, and this was reflected in the colors as well as the name.
The new machine comes in a choice of four colors, although admittedly these are less vivid in the aluminum than they appear in photos …
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The Cosmic Orange color Apple offered for the iPhone 17 Pro proved hugely popular, and was credited with helping the company hit record iPhone sales last year.
It seems the company’s competitors were paying close attention, several of them adopting a very similar color tone for their latest Android smartphones – with the above one of the more blatant clones …
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Apple finally unveiled the long-awaited entry-level MacBook, the MacBook Neo – and it was certainly worth the wait. The shiny new machine hit the most optimistic of price estimates, with a starting price of just $599.
There’s little doubt that the Neo will cannibalize some sales of the MacBook Air. Although it certainly involves compromises, it will be the right choice for many. However, my suspicion is that it will actually end up cannibalizing even more iPad sales …
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You’d expect Windows Central to be pretty adamant in favoring Windows laptops over any MacBook. Yet not only the website itself, but also its readers, see the MacBook Neo as a move that should see Microsoft panicking.
The site says that the timing couldn’t be better for Apple given that more Windows users than ever before are looking to switch platform, and thinks it will hurt sales of machines like the $600 ASUS Vivobook 14 shown above …
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I earlier estimated that Apple would sell gazillions of MacBook Neo machines. TrendForce is now out with a slightly more formal estimate of four to five million units this year.
The market intelligence company also notes that Apple is headed in the opposite direction to most of its competitors …
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I’ve just argued that the MacBook Neo offers phenomenal value for money and is the machine I expect to recommend to a great many people.
However, it of course won’t be suitable for everyone. I think a quick glance at the specs would rapidly rule it out for videographers, but there is one compromise that means it’s not a good choice for photographers either …
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If there was one product that cemented the myth of the “Apple tax” – the supposedly excessive price premium paid for the logo – it was the MacBook Air. People would point to Apple’s cheapest laptop costing $1,000 and loudly proclaim that you could buy a Windows machine or Chromebook from around $300.
The comparison was of course spurious. The cheap laptops being used to make the argument were ugly plastic things with exceedingly poor specs compared to the MacBook Air. Still, it was undeniable that a four-figure starting price did prove a barrier to a lot of people – but all that has changed with the MacBook Neo …
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The Apple Store app and website has just gone down with the ‘Be right back’ message Apple uses ahead of major new product announcements.
We’re of course expecting the imminent announcement of the new entry-level MacBook, which may be branded as the MacBook Neo …
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TikTok is setting itself apart from most other online platforms that offer messaging by stating that it won’t be introducing end-to-end encryption to ensure the privacy of direct messages.
This means that the company will be able to read messages sent between users, which is likely to cause concerns even after its US operations were separated from its Chinese owner …
Update: Added comment from TikTok below
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We noted that the brand new M5 Pro and M5 Max versions of the MacBook Pro have a significantly different chip architecture to their predecessors.
While the M4 Pro and M4 Max models had a mix of efficiency and performance cores to balance battery life against power, the new models ditch the efficiency cores …
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Prior to yesterday’s launch of the new M5 Pro and M5 Max chips, Apple Silicon chips had two types of core: efficiency and performance.
The M5 chips now have three types of core, with a complication caused by the renaming of one of them. Here’s what’s going on …
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Head on over to the just updated Apple website and the company will tell you that the MacBook Pro starts at $1,699. That is indeed the case for the original M5 version with 16GB RAM and a 1TB SSD.
However, pricing immediately jumps to well over $2,000 once you select one of the new chips, and the machine now maxes out at $7,349 …
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Apple has just announced the new, more powerful MacBook Pro models powered by the M5 Pro and M5 Max chips.
In previous editions of Apple Silicon, the Pro variant was essentially just two chips, while the Max was four. But for the M5 generation, Apple has combined two dies into a single chip …
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It shouldn’t come as any surprise that multiple studies have associated doomscrolling – compulsively consuming bad news and depressing content – with negative impacts on mental health.
Resisting the urge to do this can be especially challenging at times of international crisis like this, but it’s also never more important than right now …
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A new report says that video feeds from Meta Ray-Ban smart glasses are sent for review by human data annotators in Kenya, and that the footage includes sensitive content that is supposed to be excluded.
Whistleblowers says that the video seen by third-party contractors used by Meta includes everything from people having sex to bank cards …
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As expected, Apple has today announced the new iPhone 17e with some worthwhile upgrades over its predecessor.
The new model gets full support for MagSafe wireless charging and storage has been doubled to 256GB for the same price. There is, however, one very surprising thing about the upgrade …
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You may recall that way back in 2017, the WPA2 encryption standard used by most Wi-Fi routers at the time was cracked and had to be replaced with a new version, WPA3. Now a new attack method dubbed AirSnitch means that Wi-Fi encryption on most networks can be bypassed in order to access all of the traffic passing through the router.
Almost all routers are vulnerable, so there are three steps you should take in order to protect yourself, with the greatest risk occurring through use of public Wi-Fi hotspots …
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My personal view is that macOS 26 is a decent upgrade on balance, despite a few embarrassing mistakes. I also think that a minority of very vocal commenters have given a misleading impression about the level of opposition to the Liquid Glass update.
However, if you’ve decided not to upgrade, you’ll be pleased to know that you can stop your Mac nagging you to do so …
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