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.
Apple is not only a hugely valuable company, but it’s also the world’s most valuable brand – a title it lost for five years before winning back the top slot last year and retaining it this year.
The annual Brand Finance Global 500 index sets out to calculate the value of just the brand, distinct from the value of the company…
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Apple paid a bug bounty of $100K after a cyber security student who successfully hijacked the iPhone camera back in 2019 did the same with the Mac camera.
Ryan Pickren used an imaginative approach that allowed him to run arbitrary code on a target Mac, and received what he believes to be the largest bug bounty Apple has ever paid …
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AAPL stock is still falling a couple of days ahead of the company’s earnings report, but Wall Street is expecting another record quarter.
AAPL has fallen from just under $183 earlier this month, when the company hit a $3 trillion market cap, to $158 today – falling a further 2%+ just this morning …
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A newly-granted Apple patent suggests that the company may be planning to use optical audio transmission from AR/VR headsets to AirPods.
The patent could align with recent comments made by Apple’s head of acoustics about the limitations of Bluetooth bandwidth…
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Ericsson has just published its 2021 accounts, and the numbers shed some light on the likely Apple patent license fees – which appear significantly lower than expected. Apple appears to be risking iPhone import bans over fees of around $100-150M per quarter.
The Swedish company warned that its Q1 2022 revenues are likely to be impacted by the fact that the iPhone maker is not currently paying the fees it has been paying between 2015 and 2021 …
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The US National Counterintelligence and Security Center (NCSC) recently offered advice to individuals on protecting themselves from cyberattacks, and the UK’s National Cyber Security Centre (also NCSC!) has now done the same for businesses …
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iPhone trade-in values have always been higher than those for Android phones, and last year was no exception. Only one Android smartphone made the top five, and the worst-performing phones lost more than 80% of their value in a single year.
The iPhone 12 Pro Max held its value best, with owners able to recoup more than two-thirds of the price they paid a year later…
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A company you’ve likely never heard of may owe you money if you’ve ever used Venmo, Robinhood, Coinbase, American Express, or any other financial app that uses a company called Plaid to link the app to your bank account …
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Apple is facing the prospect of iPhone import bans in multiple counties as Ericsson steps up the pressure in its patent infringement claims.
Ericsson has already applied for injunctions in both Brazil and the Netherlands, and is expected to do so in additional European countries. One patent litigation expert says the UK is likely next in line …
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“Potentially harmful” Instagram content is defined as posts that don’t directly contravene the company’s posting rules but may still be considered unacceptable by some users. The company has now announced new steps it is taking to reduce the visibility of such posts …
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French iPhones will no longer be sold with free EarPods after a health law was overturned in favor of an environmental one.
This will mark the end of the special iPhone packaging used only in France …
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At a time when many haven’t yet upgraded to Wi-Fi 6, let alone 6e, tech companies are already making plans for Wi-Fi 7…
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The power of the M1 Max MacBook Pro has been seen in a demanding real-world photoshoot using multiple 150-megapixel layers shot with ‘the world’s best commercial camera.’
Expand Expanding CloseThe finished image was made of 28 full-resolution images, loaded into a single document in Photoshop, each one with its own masking, adjustments, and other effects. In short, it’s a behemoth of a Photoshop document, clocking in at almost 11GB in size …
It’s no secret that Apple chipmaker TSMC is years ahead of Intel, so it’s almost touching when Intel proudly announces that it expects to switch to TSMC’s 2019 chipmaking tech by 2025 …
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Foss Patents yesterday said it was inevitable that we’d see Apple countersue Ericsson, and it didn’t take long for that to happen. Each company is now suing the other for patent infringement.
Ericsson is seeking to ban the import of iPhones, and Apple wants to ban the import of mobile base stations. The Cupertino company is said to be so afraid of this that it is making an “astounding” U-turn in the way it wants the dispute to be settled …
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We may still be waiting for some developers to update their apps to run natively on M1 Macs, but the developer of SysJoker Mac malware is already on the case.
Security researcher Patrick Wardle points to what he says is the first Mac malware of 2022, and it runs on both Intel and M1 Macs. SysJoker can be controlled remotely by an attacker, allowing it to be used in many different ways …
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Ericsson has filed multiple iPhone patent infringement claims against Apple in two separate US lawsuits. In all, the company claims that Apple has infringed 12 patents, including ones relating to 5G.
It’s believed that Ericsson is seeking an import ban on iPhones over the claimed infringements in both the US and Germany, and likely other countries too …
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Use of the Chinese Olympics app, MY2022, is mandatory for everyone attending this year’s Olympic Games in Beijing, whether as an athlete or simply watching from the stadium.
The app collects sensitive personal data – like passport details, medical data, and travel history – and analysis by security researchers reveals that the code has two security holes that could expose this information …
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It’s being reported today that Israel police are using NSO’s Pegasus spyware on the country’s own citizens, including opponents of former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. NSO had previously claimed that Pegasus would not be used within Israel.
The phone hacks are said to have been carried out without warrants and without any judicial oversight.
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For the second time in seven months, former iPhone workers are being offered large sign-on bonuses as Foxconn strives to keep pace with demand for the iPhone 13.
The company offered similar increases to recruitment bonuses in June of last year …
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A proposed new US antitrust law first proposed back in August of last year has progressed to committee stage – the next step toward becoming law. If it were passed, it would result in huge changes to the App Store.
It follows Apple being forced to allow app developers to choose third-party payment platforms in South Korea and the Netherlands – but the US bill would have a far greater impact …
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The holiday quarter usually sees the iPhone named the most popular smartphone lineup as its latest flagships drive sales, and that was again the case last year.
Global supply constraints made things tighter than usual, however …
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The British government is planning to include both on-screen and live emotive stunts in an anti-encryption ad campaign designed to sway public opinion against end-to-end encryption in messaging apps.
The anti-privacy ad blitz is reportedly due to begin this month…
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Almost 38 years after the most famous ad in the world aired, director Ridley Scott has revealed his first reaction to Apple’s 1984 ad script …
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