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.
Major VPN services have shut down service in India, as there is no way to comply with a new law without breaching their own privacy protection standards.
The law also applies to iCloud Private Relay, but Apple has not yet commented on its own plans …
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Update: The gap between China and India is said to have closed from two months to six weeks. Kuo believes that iPhone 15 production next year will begin simultaneously in both countries.
There have been suggestions that iPhone 14 production would start simultaneously in China and India, significantly improving early availability of this year’s lineup. But a new report today said that Apple has had to abandon any hope of achieving this …
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Arizona’s State Governor Doug Ducey has given an update on the TSMC Arizona plant, stating that construction of the main chip facility is now complete. The plant is expected to fabricate some of Apple’s A-series and M-series chips.
In a likely bid to appease China, TSMC issued a statement stressing that Ducey had not visited the company during his trip to Taiwan …
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The Asus Zenbook 17 Fold is perhaps the most interesting thing to happen in laptop design since the original MacBook Air, back in 2008. It’s a 13-inch laptop which quickly converts into a 17-inch desktop.
Apple sufficiently mollified me when it launched a 16-inch MacBook Pro that I stopped my endless wishing for the return of the 17-inch one – but the new Zenbook shows the intriguing possibility of getting the best of both worlds …
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Apple’s Didi investment back in 2016 was hailed by the Cupertino company’s CEO Tim Cook as a “great financial investment.” Sadly, that very much turned out not to be the case.
The investment has instead seen Apple’s billion-dollar stake lose at least 80% of its value, and the company’s sole representative on the Didi board has now quietly resigned …
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The consensus view appears to be that we can expect the iPhone 14 price to be higher than the iPhone 13 line-up – but a new report today suggests that the increase may be lower than expected.
There are quite a few reasons to expect Apple to increase the starting price of this year’s line-up, from new features to increased component costs …
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A Californian bill colloquially known as the Kids’ Code has been unanimously passed by the State Senate, following earlier approval by the State Assembly. It now requires the signature of Gov. Gavin Newsom to take effect.
The California Age-Appropriate Design Code Act addresses a key loophole in the equivalent federal law, the much weaker Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act of 1998 …
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A growing number of TikTok mental health videos are posted by people with no qualifications, and the information they post is often inaccurate and irresponsible, say experts …
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The sale of location data sales has become both big business, and one of the biggest privacy threats in recent years. While the companies involved in this $14B industry claim that only aggregated and anonymized data is sold, numerous investigations have shown that this simply isn’t true.
Just yesterday, we learned that the Federal Trade Commission is suing a data broker that can identify people seeking abortions, and that it made samples of that data publicly available. In the past, we’ve seen how location data can reveal everything from where cops’ kids go to school to US troop movements in war zones …
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There have been conflicting reports in the chip industry on when we might expect an end to the global chip shortage, but Apple chipmaker TSMC says that isn’t going to happen any time soon.
The growing number of low-end chips used in everything from smartphones and cars means that production can be held up by a lack of mundane chips costing as little as 50 cents …
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Dateline podcast shows are now offering a subscription option on Apple Podcasts, giving subscribers early access to new episodes, as well as bonus episodes every month.
Dateline NBC says that podcasts offer a number of benefits over TV shows …
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With so many power banks available these days, it can be hard for a company to make theirs stand out – but the Excitrus 100W Magnetic Wireless Power Bank achieves this in a couple of ways.
First, the green fabric finish makes it visually distinctive. But more importantly, the capabilities it offers will, I think, hit the sweet spot for many …
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A DoorDash hack has been confirmed by the company, with full customer contact details exposed by the security breach: name, address, and phone numbers.
Separately, LastPass has also confirmed an attack on its own systems, but says it doesn’t believe that any user data was obtained …
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Twitter COVID-19 misinformation labeling has got the company more into trouble as it made literally dozens of embarrassing errors this week. It mistakenly applied the label to factually correct tweets from doctors and scientists, in some cases suspending their accounts.
Twitter has offered its apologies to those affected, and promised to review its procedures to prevent any repetition …
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iPhone Lockdown Mode is an extreme form of security designed to protect people who might find themselves targets of state-sponsored spyware, like Pegasus. However, a privacy activist says it also makes it easy for a website to detect when someone is using it – and has demonstrated this.
So what is designed to be protection against rogue governments could actually end up helping them identify people who may be of interest …
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With the Apple Watch S8 likely to launch alongside the iPhone 14 lineup on September 7, it’s not surprising that shipments of the Series 7 have continued to decline as its replacement draws closer.
A new report today contained a mix of good and bad news for Apple …
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A DuckDuckGo Email Protection service was last year launched as a limited beta, with a waiting list for those wanting to use it. The waitlist is now gone, and anyone can get access to it right away.
The privacy-focused email forwarding service strips out trackers, and offers the ability to create disposable email addresses, all without changing your email provider – similar to Apple’s Hide My Email feature …
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The iPhone 14 notch is set to be replaced by a “pill and hole-punch” design on the Pro models, while the base models will keep the familiar notch design – but in a smaller size. In both cases, Apple has somehow managed to squeeze all the necessary components into a smaller space.
A newly published Apple patent application may well explain the simple approach used to achieve this …
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A Twitter investigation has been announced by the Senate Judiciary Committee, following claims of “extreme” security failings at the social network. The claims were made in an 84-page report by the company’s former head of security, Peiter Zatko.
Concerns have been expressed about the national security risks of bad actors being able to fake tweets from the accounts of world leaders and major media organizations …
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There was good news and bad news yesterday. The Apple Self Service Repair program was extended to the M1 MacBook Air and MacBook Pro models – but if you were hoping that would enable DIY MacBook upgrades, you’re out of luck.
Apple very deliberately and specifically prevents this, and that seems to me to be the wrong decision for customers and the MacBook maker alike …
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A series of recent reports have all pointed to relatively strong Chinese iPhone sales within an overall declining market. The latest one echoes this, stating that Apple’s most expensive models have achieved the greatest growth, up 147% year-on-year.
The market intelligence data shows an interesting split in sales by price level …
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The Twitter toxic content and spam teams are being combined, following allegations that the company didn’t take seriously its attempts to address both bots and security vulnerabilities.
We yesterday learned that the company’s former head of security filed an 84-page complaint in which he accused the company of “extreme, egregious deficiencies” …
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A Facebook privacy lawsuit looks likely to be settled after parent company Meta offered a total of $37.5M to settle claims by US users.
The lawsuit relates to Facebook tracking user locations even after they had switched off Location Services …
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A Plex data breach has exposed usernames, email addresses, and encrypted passwords. The scale of the security failure is not yet known, but the company is requiring all users to change their passwords.
The issue was compounded by Plex servers not having sufficient capacity to cope with the number of users attempting to do so, and a series of other problems …
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