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.
iOS privacy concerns were raised last week when security researchers appeared to demonstrate that iPhones send the same analytics data to Apple whether you grant or decline permission.
The same researchers have now demonstrated that Apple can – despite assurances to the contrary – link this data back to individual users, as the same ID is used as that for iCloud accounts …
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Update: TSMC has now confirmed the earlier report; Reuters reports a statement by the company’s founder, added at the bottom of the piece.
It’s looking increasingly likely that some future Apple chips will be made in the US, following a new report about A-series and M-series chipmaker TSMC.
The report says that TSMC plans to build a second plant in Arizona, and that this one will use the company’s most advanced tech …
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A leaker with a decent track record has reported that the iPhone 15 design will feature a titanium casing, and may have a rounded back, rather than the squared edge of the current models.
This might give next year’s iPhone lineup a similar profile to the iPhone 5C, where the front of the casing was square but the rear was rounded …
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#RIPTwitter, #TwitterDown, and #GoodByeTwitter are among the trending hashtags on the social media platform, as the world watches the latest developments in the slow-motion car crash.
Two developments in particular are leading to an acceleration in fears that Twitter’s troubles may be about to get even worse …
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1Password passkeys functionality will launch next year, but to help people understand the benefits and prepare for a world without passwords, the company has put together an interactive demo.
Although the company used for the demo is fictitious, you will create a real passkey which will be saved to your 1Password account …
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AirPods Pro can serve as affordable hearing aids, with one study suggesting that they perform as well as dedicated devices costing four-figure sums.
Apple is believed to have hearing aid functionality as a medium-term goal for AirPods as part of its commitment to Accessibility, and has already made some moves in this direction …
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While it is indeed likely that at least one of the TSMC Arizona plants will make chips for Apple, a Bloomberg report today argues that this is – for the next few years, at least – mostly for PR purposes.
It suggests that Apple will want to announce that some of its chips will be made in the US, but the reality will be rather unimpressive …
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Two new market intelligence reports show that the iPhone dominated in both Southeast Asia and in China’s latest online shopping festival.
Both reports indicate a fall in overall smartphone shipments and revenue, but show the iPhone substantially outperforming the market …
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Following the launch of the Apple Watch Ultra, some are suggesting that next year’s iPhone lineup might see an iPhone 15 Ultra instead of a Pro Max.
The theory is that Apple will increase the differentiation between the Pro and Ultra model iPhones, with the twin aims of pushing up the price of the top-of-the-range model and persuading Pro buyers to switch to the Ultra …
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In a rare piece of good news about the social network, Twitter DMs (direct messages) look set to get end-to-end encryption. After a reference was found to the unannounced privacy feature in code for the Android app, Musk appeared to confirm the plan, responding to a tweet with a winking emoji …
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Last year’s Epic Games versus Apple ruling left both sides unhappy with the result, each filing its own appeal. An appeals hearing took place on Monday, and the intention and effect of the Apple ecosystem – aka the “Apple walled garden” – was the core issue debated.
Apple made the case that the ecosystem is designed to keep iPhone users safe from malware and scams, while Epic argued that the iPhone maker is simply afraid of competition …
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A number of Twitter employees have been fired in tweets by the company’s new owner, Elon Musk. The billionaire apparently wasn’t pleased at being publicly fact-checked by his own engineers …
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A regulatory filing has revealed that Warren Buffett’s conglomerate Berkshire Hathaway bought a $4.1B stake in Apple chipmaker TSMC …
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Apple’s ad business generated around $4B in the company’s last fiscal year. That’s a lot of money, of course, but I think there’s a risk that ad sales are doing more than $4B’s worth of damage to the company.
Let’s start by putting that number into context. By most standards, it’s a huge sum of money. It’s as much as AstraZeneca made from a year’s worth of COVID-19 vaccines, for example. But for Apple, it represents around 1% of its annual revenue for the year …
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When Apple announced the iPhone 14 line-up, it said that the Emergency SOS via satellite service would be launching in November. It last week reiterated that, providing a little more information. Today, the service is live in the US and Canada.
Additionally, Apple has also revealed that the feature will go live in four more countries sometime next month …
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The Twitter latest is shaping up to be a daily post, as the world continues trying to keep up with the soap-opera-like developments at the tech giant.
Let’s kick things off with a prank which cost a pharmaceutical company $15B in market cap, leading owner Elon Musk to promise some unspecified third version of a verification scheme …
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A potentially sensitive US Army iOS app is among thousands of iOS and Android apps to include user-profiling code from a Russian company that pretended to be an American one – raising both privacy and security concerns.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) also used the code in seven of its apps. Both organizations have now removed the code, but it remains present in thousands of other apps …
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A security researcher has discovered that Apple analytics data is collected and sent from iPhones, whether or not users consented during the setup process. The amount of data collected was described by the researcher as “shocking.”
A class action lawsuit has now filed, which says that Apple’s privacy promises are “completely illusory” …
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The iPhone production crisis in China has led Foxconn to announce plans to quadruple its workforce in India. The move will not, however, solve the immediate problem.
While Apple and its suppliers have been working for years on reducing the company’s dependence on China as a manufacturing hub, progress has been painfully slow – especially for the iPhone …
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The Twitter Blue subscription – which turned the social media platform into a theme park for trolls, pranksters, and scammers – is no longer available in the iOS app. (It was never available in the Android one.) Additionally, some of those who paid for the subscription report that their blue checkmark is gone.
It’s unclear at present whether this is as a result of the company’s latest policy U-turn, or a system that has fallen over after half the company’s staff were laid off …
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There’s no let-up in the Twitter chaos, as new owner Elon Musk continues to make things up as he goes along.
Musk has today stated that the rollout of “new verified Blue” is currently limited to iPhone owners only, and that new accounts are banned from applying for a Twitter Blue subscription after some epic trolling …
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The COVID-19 disruption to iPhone 14 production at Foxconn’s primary assembly plant was bad enough for Apple to issue a warning about limited availability, and Foxconn has now issued a warning about the impact on its own prospects for the current quarter.
Foxconn says that revenue from consumer electronics assembly will fall in the all-important holiday quarter, which is usually a busy one for the company …
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Bad Bunny – aka Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio – has been named Apple Music artist of the year for 2022, as the company highlighted some of the achievements of the Puerto Rican rapper and singer.
Apple said that Bad Bunny “truly owned the year” and “ushered in a seismic shift in global pop over the past few years” …
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China’s COVID-19 outbreaks are getting worse rather than better, with another major manufacturing and export hub under lockdown.
Some 4 million people in Guangzhou have been told to stay home, in what government officials have described as the worst outbreak since the start of the pandemic …
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