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 US Department of Labor has agreed to investigate an Ashley Gjøvik complaint against Apple. The former senior engineering manager alleged that the Cupertino company treated her unfairly, before first suspending and finally dismissing her.
Gjøvik said that the saga began when she raised concerns over workplace safety in regard to previous contamination on the land beneath the building where she was based …
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A Kuo report back in April said that we can expect a 48MP iPhone 14 camera next year, together with 8K video recording. This has now been echoed by a second analyst.
We would, however, repeat the caveat we offered at the time: The headline may not tell the whole story …
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Apple has patched the Log4Shell iCloud vulnerability, after it was last week revealed that a security hole in the open-source tool log4j put millions of apps at risk.
Cybersecurity experts described the vulnerability as “setting the internet on fire,” and “the most critical security vulnerability in a decade” …
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It’s taken me a while to test the night video capabilities, but it turned out that it was the iPhone 13 video stabilization performance that really impressed me!
A TV professional friend once said to me that the most common shot seen in any movie or TV show is one taken on a locked-off tripod …
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Apple has announced an upcoming Apple Fitness+ Time to Walk with Prince William. In addition to Apple Fitness+ subscribers, it will also be made available to everyone as a free airing on Apple Music 1.
The company says that the walk will be 38 minutes, with a choice of listening times to suit different time zones, and will have a mental health focus …
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A Pokémon Go 120fps option is now available to take advantage of the ProMotion displays on the iPhone 13 Pro and Pro Max.
Frame rates above 30fps are also available on older iPhones, but in both cases you’ll have to manually enable the option …
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Facebook 2FA (two-factor authentication) will become mandatory for accounts likely to be targeted by hackers. The move is one of a range of protections offered to high-risk accounts in order to reduce the likelihood of interference in elections.
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An Instacart 15-minute delivery service is planned to launch early next year, in a significant advance on the company’s current two-hour delivery time (with a 30-minute service available in some cities) …
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A pessimistic iPhone 13 report looks set to see AAPL lose the gains made in the past couple of days. The company defied the general fall in stocks over COVID-19 Omicron fears, but pre-market trading suggests that it will lose these gains today …
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A class action lawsuit alleging that Apple has an App Store monopoly has been rejected by a federal court judge, in a 34-page ruling.
Part of the ruling essentially said that the plaintiffs did a poor job in stating their case, but another element potentially puts Apple in a strong position when it comes to defending other antitrust cases against the App Store …
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Omicron fears caused most stocks to fall yesterday, including tech giants like Amazon, Google, Meta, and Microsoft. The Dow lost 651 points, the Nasdaq was down 1.6%, and the S&P 500 down 1.9%.
AAPL, however, not only weathered the storm, but saw its share price increase by 3.16% as investors saw it as a safe haven, with good short- and long-term prospects …
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If you use the Mac Spaces feature, to create multiple desktops on a single monitor, are you seeing apps appear on the wrong desktops?
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Based on supply chain data of smartphone production levels, a market intelligence company is predicting iPhone market share for Q4 2021 will hit 23.1%. That would be up from 15.9% last quarter, and enough to convincingly take the No. 1 slot from Samsung.
Apple is expected to benefit from both strong holiday quarter demand, and better supply chain management than its competitors – factors also cited in an earlier tablet report …
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A new market intelligence reports indicates that Western European tablet shipments declined sharply in Q3 2021, with four out of five of the top brands seeing their year-on-year numbers fall by anywhere from 20% to 53%.
Apple was the only tablet vendor to see its sales increase during the quarter, enjoying a 33% growth in iPad shipments, year-on-year …
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Following problems with the Apple Watch $100 rebate program, customers are now reporting that T-Mobile trade-ins against iPhone 13 purchases are being similarly denied.
T-Mobile promised extremely generous trade-in values of up to $800 on older models when purchasing a new iPhone 13, with credits being applied against monthly bills. But some customers report being denied, while others say the credits are not appearing on their bills …
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Traditional spying is much harder in a world of smartphones, ubiquitous CCTV, and other “digital dust,” according to CIA director William Burns, a view backed by many current and former intelligence officials.
In particular, it’s much harder for a spy to establish a convincing false identity in another country …
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The breaking up of a bunch of old-school industrial conglomerates is leading some to question the very long-term prospects of the “new conglomerates” – tech giants like Apple, Amazon, Facebook, and Google.
But a piece in the WSJ argues that they have two advantages over companies like General Electric, which could see them last even longer …
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I continue to love my M1 Max MacBook Pro in the main – especially the cool and silent running, and the impressive real-world battery-life – but three (or possibly four) annoying macOS Monterey bugs are somewhat spoiling the experience.
Two of the issues have been ongoing almost from the start, and they are now getting old.
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Apple sales in Turkey have resumed after the company suspended them due to a currency crash in the country. However, local prices have been increased by 25% to reflect the devaluation of the Turkish lira against the US dollar.
Apple suspended sales from the local online store, and there have been conflicting reports that it also turned people away from retail stores …
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As part of hitting back at spyware company NSO, Apple alerted a Polish prosecutor that her iPhone appears to have been compromised by Pegasus. This also gives us our first look at the text of Apple’s security alerts.
Although Poland has not admitted purchasing and using the spyware, there is significant evidence that it has done so …
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Apple has been fined €10M ($11.3M) in Italy for what competition authorities say is the misuse of customer data. Google has been fined the same amount for the same thing.
It follows a $225M fine in the same country earlier this week for price fixing between Apple and Amazon …
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Just when you think robot cleaners can’t get any more convenient, the next generation comes along. The Neabot NoMo Q11 is one of a handful of robot vacuum cleaners and mops which don’t just do the cleaning for you, but also empty their own on-board bins.
I noted in a recent Smart Home Diary piece that the technology never stands still …
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US mobile carriers are trying to reduce 5G aviation fears by offering to temporarily reduce base station power across the country, with output very tightly limited near airports. They propose to do this for six months, to allow time for the Federal Aviation Authority (FAA) to carry out further studies.
The situation appears to be rather a bizarre one given the complete lack of evidence for any risks of interference with aircraft …
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Twitter recently changed the behavior of its website to pause your Twitter feed until you refresh, and it has now done the same with its iOS app …
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