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.
A medical review has shown that Apple Watch heart attack detection is technically feasible using nothing more than the ECG sensors built into current models.
While Apple’s recommended method of taking an ECG reading results in a 1-lead reading, it is possible to apply a different method to obtain a 9-lead read. There are, however, important provisos to this health news …
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A report today says that Apple is ahead of most large companies in tackling a form of discrimination which originates in India but has affected employee recruitment in Silicon Valley: the caste system.
Although the caste system is in part reflected in attitudes to skin color, discrimination on the basis of caste is not made explicitly illegal by current US law …
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CNET senior video producer and diabetic Justin Eastzer says that a combination of a continuous glucose monitor (GCM) and his Apple Watch saved his life.
The CGM detected dangerously low blood sugar, and his Apple Watch woke him with an alert, just in time …
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There’s been an impressive roster of Apple TV+ awards since the service launched, and last night added two more, at the Hollywood Critics Association TV Awards.
Both Severance and Ted Lasso won in their categories, after a combined total of 24 nominations between them …
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After hundreds of MacBook Pro workers at a Quanta plant broke through barriers in protest of tough COVID-19 lockdown conditions, the company has indicated that it is now paying significant incentives in an attempt to retain enough staff.
All in, the disruptions saw the MacBook assembler’s profits halved in the second quarter, and the company said it took more than two months to return to full production …
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Concerns about the possibility of a Taiwan invasion by China have grown, as more details have come to light about Beijing’s stance.
The main concern, of course, is the safety and human rights of Taiwanese residents, but the situation does also have the potential for substantial disruption to production of Apple products …
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A Hide My Email Ventura feature for third-party apps has been removed from Apple’s website. The disposable email address feature now appears to remain limited to the company’s own Mail and Safari apps.
The feature has been removed from the Ventura preview page sometime in the past week or so …
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An AirTag stalker has been handed a prison sentence and subjected to a restraining order after he was found to have planted the tracking device in his former girlfriend’s car.
Not being the brightest of criminals, the stalker revealed his knowledge of the victim’s whereabouts by sending her a text message …
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Update: Apple has today extended this patent with additional claims, which Patently Apple suggests is intended to better protect the invention. This doesn’t necessarily make it more likely that Apple will implement additional gestures, but it seemed a plausible possibility at the time, and the update certainly indicates continued interest by the company.
There could be more Apple Pencil gestures in store for future generations of the company’s iPad stylus. We saw the first of these in the second-generation device, in the form of a double-tap to quickly access tools …
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One of the more annoying things some apps do is incorporate their own in-app browser, opening that for web links instead of respecting your chosen default browser.
This has long been a nuisance, but a developer has now explained the security risks of doing so, especially when dealing with companies not noted for their privacy standards – like Facebook …
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An FTC privacy push could begin as soon as today, says a new report, thanks to the determination of chair Lina Khan to make this a key issue for the commission.
However, insiders say that the process of drawing up FTC privacy rules is likely to be a slow one, and it could be years before the commission is in a position to enforce them …
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Last year’s Epic Games versus Apple ruling left neither side happy, with both the developer and iPhone maker filing appeals against the judgement. The appeal hearing has now been scheduled for October 21, and it looks set to be an uphill battle for Apple.
Apple and Epic will each get only 20 minutes to make oral arguments, but we may also be hearing from the antitrust division of the Department of Justice (DOJ), and potentially also an argument on behalf of 35 state attorneys general – each of which is effectively siding with Epic …
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If there’s anything in the Photos app I’m likely to want to view on my iPhone, it’s going to be my recent and favorite photos. Yet currently, the only way I can be sure of being able to do so with or without a mobile data connection is if I keep local copies of everything.
That’s because Apple offers only a binary choice: Keep all photos and video in local storage on your phone, or let the iPhone automatically manage things, deciding for itself when to offload storage to iCloud-only …
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President Joe Biden signed the $52B CHIPS and Science Act yesterday, authorizing subsidies for chipmaking within the US.
The White House claims the act has spurred $44B worth of new chip fabrication plans, but many doubts have been expressed about the likely effectiveness of the measure …
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Foxconn earnings comfortably beat expectations during the second quarter of the year, coming in at NT$33.3B ($1.1B) against consensus projections of NT$30.8 ($1.02B).
Strong demand for the iPhone 13 made a direct contribution to the company’s income, of course, but it also indirectly helped with assembly of products for Sony and Dell …
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An App Store antitrust investigation in South Korea could see Apple, Google, and local company One Store found guilty of breaching a law that came into effect earlier this year.
If confirmed, then each company could be fined up to 2% of its revenue in the country …
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Snapchat parental controls have been long-promised, but their implementation has proceeded at a snail’s pace. A tool announced back in May has now finally launched.
Known as Family Center, the tool lets parents see who their kids are chatting with, but does not allow them to view the actual content of the messages …
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Update: A federal judge has now approved the settlement – see bottom of piece for details
An iCloud class action lawsuit has been settled out of court, with Apple agreeing to pay a total of $14.8M to US residents subscribing to one of the paid storage tiers during a specific time period.
The payout was agreed upon after it was alleged that Apple breached the service terms and conditions by storing user data on non-Apple servers …
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Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has begun a new WhatsApp privacy campaign by announcing three new upcoming features.
This includes the ability to block people from taking screenshots of a photo or video when you’ve used the existing “view once” feature to share it …
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An industry body whose prominent members include Apple has claimed that there is no support for the tech antitrust bill which could threaten the App Store.
It’s now looking increasingly unlikely that two antitrust bills will make it to a vote before the summer recess – and that raises the prospect that they may be completely sidelined …
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The effectiveness of keyword spamming on the App Store is leading developers of many apps to change the names of their apps – including those owned by major brands …
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Update: Twitter has rather belatedly confirmed that a hacker was able to expose the account details, though the company has not commented on the 5.4M number. See statement at the end of the piece.
A Twitter data breach has allowed an attacker to get access to the contact details of 5.4M accounts. Twitter has confirmed the security vulnerability which allowed the data to be extracted.
The data – which ties Twitter handles to phone numbers and email addresses – has been offered for sale on a hacking forum, for $30,000 …
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AAPL acquisitions have fallen dramatically in the past couple of years, according the company’s regulatory filings.
Apple spent $1.5B on buying companies in fiscal 2020, falling to just $33M in 2021 and $169M in the first nine months of its 2022 fiscal year …
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There’s good news if you own LIFX smart home products. Although the company went bust back in April, an acquisition means that LIFX lives on.
Global lighting giant Feit Electric has bought the brand, and says that it will support existing products, introduce new ones, and improve the app …
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