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.
Disabled people who rely on Apple’s accessibility features say that Voice Control has fallen behind Siri in both accuracy and capabilities, despite being an essential rather than a nice-to-have.
They say it’s frustrating to see the Cupertino company continue to make improvements to Siri, while Voice Control – which is key to many disabled people being able to use Apple tech – has apparently been forgotten …
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We’re just a few weeks away from the launch of this year’s iPhone lineup, and a new report says that iPhone 15 production is underway in India, as well as China.
However, one big question remains: Will Apple succeed in simultaneously shipping launch iPhones from both countries?
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Analysts have been pitching the idea of Apple buying Disney for many years, and to most of us it has seemed a rather ridiculous one. The supposed reasoning for it has always been absurdly weak.
Personally, I remain extremely skeptical. But the idea is now getting new traction, and being taken seriously in some unlikely quarters – and even I have to admit that there is some merit to the latest incarnation of the idea-that-will-not-die …
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Intel’s planned acquisition of Tower Semiconductor has failed, after the US chipmaker was unable to get the necessary regulatory approval.
The abandonment of the $5.4B deal is a setback to Intel’s hopes of competing with Apple chipmaker TSMC …
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If you’ve ever done an Apple Trade In of an old device when buying a new one, you may have briefly wondered what happens to it after you leave the store.
We’ve previously had a look at the post-Trade In experience for a major US carrier, and a new report gives us a similar behind-the-scenes look at what happens to devices traded in through Apple itself …
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A report yesterday revealed that a set of popular streaming TV services can now cost more than traditional cable TV packages.
It pointed out that subscription costs have risen dramatically, which creates an obvious risk of people cutting back on the number of services. But I think there’s a second issue, too, and that’s the competition for attention …
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Apple has been awarded a second patent for a way to implement MacBook Face ID, but we’d still caution against expecting it to happen any time soon.
That’s both because of the company’s past statements about the idea, and a specific technical challenge involved in implementing it in MacBooks …
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Apple has successfully defended itself against claims that it infringed two Bluetooth pairing patents relating to AirPods. The claim was a ridiculous one, but might have succeeded on a technical point of law. Fortunately, sanity prevailed when the appeal judge decided to apply a commonsense test.
One-E-Way held two patents for a system of generating a “unique user code,” which is sent to a headphone to enable it to pair with the other device …
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A new report suggests that the base iPhone 14 overtook the iPhone 14 Pro and Pro Max models during the second quarter of the year. Apple did, though, continue to take the top four slots when it came to driving OLED smartphone revenue, with Samsung only managing fifth place.
In the previous quarter, the iPhone 14 Pro Max had seen the highest number of shipments, despite being the most expensive model sold by Apple …
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Every 5 to 10 years, Apple makes a decision it knows will upset a lot of people, and generates a lot of negative PR – but the company also knows that the fuss generally dies down, and everyone then forgets all about it. It looks like the Apple Watch X is set to be the next example.
Mark Gurman reported over the weekend that while this year’s Apple Watch upgrade will be the usual modest annual bump, we can expect a major redesign in 2024 or 2025 – with the name suggesting as big an update as from the iPhone 7 to iPhone X …
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A new report highlights the success of the Made in India initiative, with a massive 2 billion mobile phones made in the country since the program was introduced.
Apple has been a major contributor to that stat, going from making only the iPhone SE in the country through to making the latest flagship models today – and more to come …
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Streaming TV costs are now higher than cable packages, says a new analysis. It follows warnings that a “crash” was on the way – a day that has now arrived.
The report says that after price rises by Apple TV+, HBO Max, Disney, Hulu, and others, the total cost of a basket of popular streaming TV services has now hit $87 per month …
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macOS has a number of built-in tools to detect Mac malware, with Background Task Manager added to the defenses last year. However, a security researcher says that this can be trivially bypassed, and that Apple failed to act on his recommendations to fix it.
Patrick Wardle presented his findings at the Defcon hacker conference, making the unusual decision to do so without advising Apple ahead of time …
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I’ve been meaning to do a roundup of my favorite iOS 17 features for some time and had been waiting for one major one to actually work before doing so.
Having now given up on that, I decided instead to run through the iOS 17 features which have the greatest appeal for me, including a couple I haven’t yet been able to actually use …
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I know, the first model hasn’t even gone on sale, and we’re already talking about a future Vision Pro headset, but blame Apple, not us!
The company has just filed a patent application for a method of allowing a future model to automatically adjust its fit and display positions to suit different users, which would make it more practical to share between several people …
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A newly-discovered Downfall vulnerability found in Intel chips may affect older Macs powered by these processors …
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A reported delay to the planned introduction of the first micro-LED Apple Watch has been explained by a supply chain report, which reveals the extreme manufacturing challenges involved in bringing the next generation of display tech to Apple products.
While we’re expecting micro-LED to roll out first to the Apple Watch before later making its way to the iPhone, iPad, and Mac, today’s report suggests that a Vision Pro successor may also get the new tech at a relatively early stage …
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The ongoing TSMC US chip plant battle continues to rage, over the company’s plans to bring in hundreds of Taiwanese workers to speed up construction. The plant is slated to make chips for older Apple devices.
The latest development has seen a popular Taiwanese YouTube channel accuse US workers of laziness, with anti-American insults also posted to a local Facebook group …
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Enforcement action by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has seen Wells Fargo and several other banks fined a total of $549M for using personal end-to-end encrypted messaging accounts to discuss company business.
The SEC said senior bank officials used personal iMessage, WhatsApp, and Signal accounts when making business decisions …
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A group of white hat hackers are competing to make AI go rogue – with the backing of the White House. The contest, at this year’s Def Con event, is intended to expose vulnerabilities in artificial intelligence systems, so that their developers can work on fixes.
A smaller event has already seen AI systems expose personal medical data and help plan a bank robbery, while some AI systems don’t seem to need any help from hackers, as they promote eating disorders …
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Sony, which makes all of the iPhone camera sensors, has now effectively said that it thinks iPhone sales won’t grow this year. This marks a change to its previous view that the smartphone market would recover in the second half of this year.
The company said that demand for smartphones is slowing in China, and worsening in the US – echoing Apple’s own warning not to expect growth from the iPhone 15 launch …
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Yet another app clampdown in China looks set to cause problems for developers both inside and outside the country, but with small developers from the US and other foreign countries hit hardest.
A new law will require all developers to “file business details” with the Chinese government, in what some are saying amounts to requesting permission to make an app available through the App Store …
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Between our sources and those of Bloomberg, we’d already narrowed down the iPhone 15 event date to one of two dates, and the Mark Gurman now says that “signs are increasingly pointing to September 12.”
Gurman also reports unsurprising confirmation that the event will use what is now Apple’s usual hybrid format …
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The Matter and Thread standards are supposed to ensure that a huge range of smart home devices can work seamlessly together, mirroring the benefits offered by HomeKit compatibility. But this isn’t the case, say multiple manufacturers.
The main benefit of Thread is that smart home devices can not only talk to each other, but one can pass on commands to another, boosting reliability. There is, however, a problem …
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