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.
The Stage Manager controversy doesn’t look to be going away anytime soon, despite Apple’s attempts to explain its reasoning for limiting the feature to M1 iPads.
I expressed my own disappointment that my 12.9-inch 2018 iPad Pro won’t get the feature, but it’s an even bigger blow to those who bought a 2020 model, only to discover that it is excluded from the headline iPadOS 16 feature just two years later …
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An App Tracking Transparency antitrust investigation is underway, on the basis that Apple requires third-party apps to ask permission for tracking, but the company does not do so for its own apps.
The investigation has been launched in Germany, which is a somewhat surprising fact …
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Apple Pickup spaces have been the most notable addition to Apple Stores for some considerable time. They offer a streamlined way to collect online orders from a retail store.
Former 9to5Mac writer Michael Steeber says that they offer something else: a rare glimpse at Apple’s design evolution process, played out in public …
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Apple Watch Parkinson’s monitoring was one of the things Apple demonstrated when it first announced ResearchKit, back in 2015. But a new developer partner has now taken this idea to a whole new level.
Rather than just gather aggregated data to help researchers, a new app can gather personalized data to provide doctors with much more reliable data for individual treatment …
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A patent troll who purchased a 2016 patent has filed an infringement claim against Apple for the Auto Unlock feature, originally designed to allow an Apple Watch to unlock a Mac using the same Apple ID.
This is despite the fact that the patent application was filed after Apple announced Auto Unlock …
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If you’re curious about Apple TV’s alternative reality space series, you can now watch For All Mankind season one free, for a limited time …
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The Apple BNPL (Buy Now, Pay Later) scheme will use your Apple ID history as one form of fraud prevention, says a new report today.
The report also notes how Apple Pay Later addresses one of the key issues to becoming a credit provider: reputational risk …
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Just two days after I bet that Apple is seriously considering larger iPads to take full advantage of Stage Manager, we got reports of a new 14-inch iPad Pro in the works.
I was thinking more like 15 inch, but if a 14.1-inch model is first to launch, I’m pretty sure I’m not going to be able to resist …
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An AirTag stalking cop has been charged and relieved of duty after he was found to have secretly installed two of the tracking devices in his ex-girlfriend’s car.
Fortunately one of Apple’s anti-stalking features worked in this case, and the woman heard the audible alerts …
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Reporting Twitter abuse used to be a somewhat torturous process, as it required you to figure out the specific rule they had broken before you could even tell Twitter what had happened. Fortunately, that’s no longer the case …
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A so-called PACMAN M1 chip attack created by MIT security researchers succeeded in defeating what has been described as “the last line of security” on Apple Silicon.
When designing the M1 chip, Apple created various layers of security, each designed to protect against an attacker who succeeded in penetrating the previous ones. Its final layer is a security feature known as PAC – and this has now been defeated …
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Apple’s ban on cloud gaming services in the App Store, and its insistence that all iOS browser apps must use its own WebKit browser engine, have both been declared to be anticompetitive by the UK competition watchdog.
The announcement follows a year-long investigation …
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The Apple Store union movement has now crossed the Atlantic, as staff at an Apple Store in Glasgow, Scotland, have joined a union representing retail and other workers across the UK.
The union says that there is a huge disconnect between Apple’s claimed values and its treatment of retail staff …
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Shopping for clothes and shoes online can be hit-and-miss, as you really need to see how they fit, as well as how they look on you. Amazon’s new Virtual Try-On for Shoes feature in its iOS app aims to solve the latter problem, using augmented reality to let you see virtual shoes on your own feet …
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Apple has introduced three iOS 16 accessibility features that might sound like small things, but one 9to5Mac reader says they will make a big difference to his independence.
Colin Hughes has been calling for three improvements, and says he is delighted to learn that Apple listened, and that all three are present in the first beta of iOS 16 …
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An Apple developer lawsuit filed back in 2019 has been settled after the Cupertino company agreed to pay $100M in compensation, and the court approved the deal – but the judge in the case has asked the lawyers to justify their $27M cut.
The antitrust case was brought by a number of small iOS developers, on the same basis as the separate case brought by Epic Games: that Apple has a monopoly on the sale of iOS apps, leaving them forced to give the iPhone maker a 30% cut …
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A Senate antitrust vote could take place as early as this month, and its proponents say they are confident that the legislation will pass into law.
Although there has been bipartisan support for antitrust legislation across both houses, there has been considerable debate on the wording – to the point where some were afraid that the issue would be lost to the midterms. But key figures behind the proposed bill say they now have the votes …
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A Tim Cook privacy-focused interview at the Time 100 Summit focused on why the issue matters so much to Apple’s CEO.
Cook was last month named one of the Time’s 100 most influential people of 2022, when we also learned that he would speak at the summit …
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Qualcomm will beat M2 chips in the laptop and desktop PC sector, claims the company’s CEO, thanks to expertise from three former Apple Silicon engineers.
It’s a claim we’ve heard before, of course, from both Qualcomm and Intel in relation to the M1 chip …
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When Apple announced AFib History as part of watchOS 9, it sounded like a kind of useful feature to have, but not really relevant to most people. But stated quietly within the announcement was something that I think will be absolutely huge, as the Watch gains the ability to detect more health conditions.
The Watch is going to play a massive role in helping you and your medical professionals to identify the role that lifestyle factors may have on your health …
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We first learned about plans for Apple Pay Later almost a year before the company announced the new installment payment plan at WWDC. While no interest or fees are charged, a report today says that Apple will still make money from the service.
A business school academic has also warned consumers to be cautious about using the option …
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It was a close-run thing in our poll, between iOS 16, iPadOS 16, and the MacBook Air. For me, iPadOS was the most exciting announcement, and Stage Manager the standout feature.
But there’s a huge caveat in the small print for Stage Manager, which poses a big dilemma for me …
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One of Ukraine’s responses to the Russian invasion was to add a new function to the Diia app – a government app originally intended as a digital ID card. But adding a new feature to it has created a legal conundrum …
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The pressure on Apple to create USB-C iPhones in place of Lightning ones ramped up another notch today, as the European Union reach agreement on making the charging port mandatory from 2024.
Recent reports do indicate that Apple is prepared for this, with the iPhone 15 expected to make the switch from Lightning to USB-C – though the company does have a second option …
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