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.
Two new claims that the iPhone 18 Pro will be getting a smaller Dynamic Island are getting a lot of attention at present. However, all may not be as it appears …
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Tech trends aren’t always easy to spot at an early stage, but there’s a very clear exception right now: the age verification requirement a growing number of countries and US states are introducing.
Apple is impacted by at least some of this legislation as certain apps are rated as suitable only for adults, and the company has so far introduced age verification in three countries …
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There’s a saying that there are two types of people in the world: those who have experienced major data loss and those who will experience major data loss. World Backup Day is a good time to ensure that you’re protected against falling into the second category.
Fortunately, Apple devices make it very simple to keep them automatically backed up, but it is still worrying how many people fail to do so …
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A new supply chain report says that Apple has asked both Samsung and LG to supply samples of an OLED panel suitable for an iMac.
The report says that the company is progressing plans to launch an OLED iMac, but it seems we shouldn’t expect it anytime soon …
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I reluctantly accepted last year that the end of the line for the Mac Pro was an inevitability. It had already effectively been replaced by the Mac Studio, and a macOS 26 feature was another nail in its coffin.
Yesterday was a day that had been coming since the first Apple Silicon Mac. I do think it’s the right call, but confess to still being a little sad to see it happen …
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The charging brick that came with your Apple device – or the one recommended by Apple, in the case of iPhones – usually won’t get you the fastest charge. It can be worth spending a bit more money on a more powerful charger.
Conversely, every Apple device has its own maximum charging rate, and buying a charger which exceeds this is just a waste of money …
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Apple SVP Eddy Cue has previously suggested that we may not be using iPhones ten years from now, but marketing chief Greg Joswiak appears to disagree.
Joz said in a new interview that it’s hard to imagine that we won’t still be using an iPhone 50 years from now …
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Although I appreciate Apple’s desire to keep the stock Photos app as simple as possible to use, there are a number of surprising omissions.
One of them is that there’s no way to sort or filter videos by length or file size. That’s a pretty fundamental missing feature if you’re trying to free up iPhone storage by deleting some of your largest unwanted videos. Fortunately, there’s a Shortcut available to do the job …
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If there’s one aspect of Apple Intelligence I really detest, it’s the suggested replies to iMessages. Meta is now emulating this with a new update to its Writing Help feature in WhatsApp.
The idea is that instead of actually replying to our friends with, you know, genuine human communication, we can just have AI send something generic instead …
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A court ruling with potentially massive implications has found that social media apps are intentionally designed to be addictive, and are harmful to teenage mental health.
A now 20-year-old woman sued Meta and YouTube owner Google for damaging her mental health as a child, with a jury awarding her $6 million in damages – and this is likely to be only the start …
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Previous reports have suggested that Apple is planning to fit a 200-megapixel camera to an iPhone in either 2027 or 2028.
While squeezing ever more pixels into the same size sensor would be bad news for low-light photography, the latest report has a couple of pieces of good news …
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Apple age verification went live in the UK in iOS 26.4 after a previous accidental release in the developer beta. While it was straightforward for me, some on the Apple Support forums and Reddit are reporting major problems with the process.
Some of the issues appear to be based on misunderstandings around the acceptable documentation when the company is unable to verify your age automatically, while others seem to be system failures. Update: See below for additional acceptable documents …
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Apple yesterday released iOS 26.4, with the company highlighting 13 new features and enhancements. The software update added functionality to Apple Music, made accessibility improvements, and introduced a number of other worthwhile enhancements.
There was one change the company didn’t mention, and that was the introduction of age verification for UK users. This was accidentally launched in a previous beta but is now official …
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A VPN company has put together AI chatbot privacy ratings based on the data collection practices of the ten most popular AI chatbots in the App Store.
The iPhone chatbots are ranked worst to best, and there are no prizes for guessing which of the competing apps collects the most personal data …
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Apple execs reportedly once expected the iPhone to be replaced by smart glasses by 2029, with Eddy Cue later updating this prediction to 2035.
However, one high-profile former ardent supporter of this idea has now changed his mind completely, and now believes that we will still be using smartphones 20 years from now …
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I last year explained why the iPhone had become my favourite video camera for B-roll footage despite owning a relatively expensive Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera 4K rig.
I outlined the three benefits of shooting with an iPhone in public places, and in my latest video project I discovered another one …
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Apple Silicon Macs offer truly excellent battery life compared to their Intel predecessors, but there are still times when you need to plug in to power.
If I know in advance I’m going to need mains power, then the Chargeasap Zeus is the power brick I normally carry with me. When I expect to be able to work solely on battery but have the MacBook equivalent of range anxiety, I’ve found the Rolling Square Super Tiny to be the perfect solution …
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Denon has upgraded its multiroom speaker system with three new models starting at $399. The ecosystem competes directly with Sonos by allowing up to 64 devices to be interconnected throughout your home …
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Almost every new wireless router for use in US homes is now banned from sale within the country under a new Federal Communications Commission (FCC) ruling.
The FCC says that all routers made outside the US “pose unacceptable risks to the national
security of the United States or the safety and security of United States persons” …
Meta claimed for years that it was technically challenging to implement end-to-end encryption across Facebook Messenger and Instagram DMs, but back in 2023 said that it had resolved those issues.
Unfortunately, the company has now made a U-turn on Instagram direct messages, and that’s bad news for all of us …
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The tech industry is currently in the middle of a rather gradual security transition from usernames and passwords to passkeys.
Passkeys are far more secure as online services don’t store your username and password, but Reddit CEO Steve Huffman says that the use of Face ID and Touch ID has an additional benefit …
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Early folding phones were notorious for the internal display being vulnerable to damage. Indeed, the first Samsung Galaxy Fold saw all pre-orders cancelled because of this issue.
A new supply chain report suggests that Apple is adopting two further measures in order to protect the iPhone Fold display, as well as reduce the visibility of the crease …
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While everyone is careful to acknowledge that Apple CEO Tim Cook isn’t likely to retire imminently, and that the decision about his replacement hasn’t yet been made, there seems little doubt that John Ternus is the current heir apparent.
An extensive new Bloomberg profile underlines this, describing both internal and external pointers to the company’s favored choice …
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I know, we’ve been waiting forever for the new Siri and it still isn’t here yet. Many are adopting the cynical view that it won’t be worth the wait, and that AI is mostly hype anyway.
I’ve long felt that my own view of AI is somewhat at odds with the very polarized views mostly expressed on the internet. That it’s a villain or a hero. That it’s a mental toddler or a professor. I don’t see it as either, but a recent experience with Claude suggested to me that it is now close to reaching a tipping point …
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