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 lengthy and aggressive Apple/Qualcomm patent dispute was eventually settled back in 2019, but the legal battle isn’t quite over yet.
That’s because there was an ongoing Qualcomm appeal relating to one of the patents challenged by Apple, and that case has quietly rumbled on in the background …
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A $1M iPhone repair scam running for more than three years has led to a Chinese man receiving a prison sentence, and being asked to pay almost $2M in restitution and penalties.
Using a method that has been used by other fraudsters, Haiteng Wu tricked Apple into accepting “returns” of counterfeit iPhones and replacing them with real ones …
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Apple briefly made a ceramic Apple Watch, but a new patent granted today raises the possibility of glass or ceramic MacBooks.
The patent includes near-invisible perforations in the material through which notification icons could be displayed with interactive buttons…
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Some of those who’ve updated to macOS 12.2 are experiencing severe MacBook overnight battery drain – in the worst cases, their machine are going from fully-charged to almost empty …
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The patent battle between Ericsson and Apple is further escalating. Ericsson is trying to ban resales of Apple products in Brazil, while Apple is trying to have no fewer than ten Ericsson patents declared invalid.
Ericsson is using one of Apple’s own legal tactics against the Cupertino company…
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Apple and other tech giants are using anti-China lobbying as part of their attempts to fend off US antitrust legislation, according to a new report today.
The lobbying is being done via US foreign policy think tanks …
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The latest IDC data shows that iPad shipments fell by 1.6M units in the holiday quarter year-on-year, but Apple still increased both its market share and its lead over Samsung.
The report shows that Apple shipped 17.5M iPads in Q4 2021, against 19.1 in the same quarter of 2020, a decline of 8.6% …
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It’s almost exactly two years since the first Pinterest augmented reality feature, allowing users to virtually try on different shades of lipstick – which followed a demo of the tech back in 2017. The company has now added a new AR feature, letting you see how furniture from major brands would look in your home …
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Apple enjoyed 25% growth in the European smartphone market last year, according to a new report today – significantly outpacing the overall 8% rise across all brands.
It saw the iPhone achieve its highest ever market share in Europe …
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An Apple Chinese New Year celebration features cartoon tigers dropping as you scroll down the Chinese homepage, in recognition of the year of the tiger…
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Apple’s two-factor authentication autofill feature makes it painless to enter verification codes sent via SMS, but phishing attackers are getting savvy to this.
When they trick people into clicking on a fake link to a site that prompts for an SMS code, they do the same, so it looks legit when autofill offers to paste it in for you …
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Apple Music wasted no time in poking fun at Spotify after Neil Young pulled his music from the service over COVID-19 disinformation, and Joni Mitchell has now done the same. In a 10-minute video, Joe Rogan explains his perspective and apologizes to Spotify for the controversy …
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Today is officially Data Privacy Day, designed to highlight steps we can all take to ensure that we are protecting our identity, our personal data, and our money.
The Federal Trade Commission this week revealed that fraud initiated on social media alone cost consumers around $770M last year – and identity theft can create problems that affect you for years.
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A combination of poor communication between government agencies, and mobile carrier secrecy, was responsible for the 5G aviation mess, according to a new report today …
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A special US version of Pegasus smartphone spyware was created by NSO, and purchased by the FBI, a new report reveals today. The Drug Enforcement Agency, Secret Service, and the US military also held discussions with the Israeli spyware company.
Israel had always insisted that NSO make Pegasus incapable of being used on phones registered to US numbers in order to avoid angering a powerful ally, but an exception was granted…
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Apple Music is trolling Spotify by promoting Neil Young albums and playlists after the Canadian-American singer pulled all his music from Spotify over COVID-19 disinformation …
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The White House and 35 US states have filed amicus briefs in support of the Epic Games antitrust appeal against Apple.
All are essentially arguing that the original judge made a legal error in deciding how a key antitrust law applies to the Cupertino company …
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Senator Amy Klobuchar, co-sponsor of two bipartisan antitrust bills, has dismissed Apple’s opposition to the proposed laws, after CEO Tim Cook personally lobbied against the bills.
The proposed laws are designed to prevent tech giants from abusing their dominant position to favor their own products over competing ones …
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While most current Apple devices can verify your identity by fingerprint or face recognition, Apple is also considering adding biometric identification to future AirPods.
A patent application describes two potential ways that AirPods could confirm your identity before allowing access to sensitive data, like asking Siri to read your messages…
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Security researchers have released details of DazzleSpy – Mac malware that enabled key-logging, screen captures, microphone access, and more.
DazzleSpy was used to target Hong Kong democracy activists, initially through a fake pro-democracy website, and later through a real one, in a so-called watering hole attack …
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Apple News is the most popular news app in the UK, according to official data, with 13.2M users. BBC News took second place with 12.5M users.
There is, however, an important asterisk …
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The Apple system status page is best known not for displaying the actual status of Apple services, but rather a pageful of green indicators that only change once a problem is so widespread and severe that the company can no longer hide it.
I mean, I get it. There will always be minor and temporary glitches affecting a tiny number of people, and it’s not realistic for Apple to update the page to reflect each one of these. But I think there’s no denying the fact that the page currently has its own reality distortion field …
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Intel claimed earlier this month that its new Alder Lake Core i9 benchmarks faster than Apple’s M1 Max. As with all manufacturer claims (including those made by Apple), it doesn’t mean much until independently tested.
These tests have now been done using a chunky MSI GE76 Raider laptop, and do show that Intel’s claim is technically true – but there are some pretty major caveats …
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The iPhone took the top slot in China during Q4, with Apple achieving its highest ever share of the smartphone market in the country – led by the iPhone 13.
Apple was previously in 4th place in the market share stakes, behind Huawei, Vivo, and Oppo …
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