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 must be stopped,” said Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney, at an app conference in South Korea. He also said that Google was “crazy” in the way it handled app purchases …
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One of the new iPadOS 15 accessibility features is support for eye-tracking devices, which allows people with disabilities involving little or no upper body movement to control an iPad with their eyes.
This has taken years of work, and the result isn’t cheap – though it may be covered by medical insurance …
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Otherwise titled: How having a smart home led me to spend one-and-a-half times as much as planned on a Breville Barista Touch coffee machine.
I love gadgets. I love smart home devices in particular. To me, they combine undeniable practical benefits, convenience, and gadget appeal. Even my girlfriend, who has zero interest in gadgets, has been won over by most of our smart home tech.
But there are hidden costs to being an early adopter of what is still a relatively bleeding-edge technology – both financial and otherwise …
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The Monterey app memory leak affecting many Mac users is being blamed by some on a specific accessibility feature – but that isn’t the sole cause …
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Update: Apple has addressed this and said it is standard practice, and that it regularly communicates with developers about it.
Major developers have accused Apple of secretly buying ads for their apps. While that might sound like an odd complaint, they say that the company’s motive is greed, and the effect is to cost them money.
Apple is said to be costing them millions of dollars …
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The action cam market is a pretty competitive one, with GoPro the undisputed leader – but the Insta360 Go 2 brings an interesting new take to the market. Apple is clearly a fan of the company, as the Go 2 is the sixth Insta360 camera to be sold in the company’s online store.
There are GoPro clones out there at all price points, and it doesn’t make much sense to be yet another one. So Insta360 has opted instead for a rather different camera, with very different strengths and weaknesses …
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Strong iPhone 13 demand helped Foxconn beat analyst expectations for Q3, and the company sees signs of improvement in chip supplies.
The company, whose biggest customer is Apple, announced a net income of NT$37B ($1.33B), against analyst predictions of NT$32.4B ($1.16B) …
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Update: The phone sold for $86,001. It had hit $100,100, but it appears that bidder didn’t make good, so it likely went to the second-placed bidder.
A robotics engineer dismayed by the lack of a USB-C iPhone decided to take matters into his own hands by making one – and has now put it up for sale. At the time of writing, the USB-C iPhone eBay listing was already at $85K, and subsequently hit six figures.
Ken Pillonel last month modified an iPhone X to replace the Lightning port with a fully functional USB-C port …
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Some of us with shiny new M1-powered MacBook Pros have been finding that Apple Pay doesn’t work when trying to use Touch ID on the Magic Keyboard …
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A patent application published last month suggested that an Apple drone might be in the works. Two further drone-related patent applications have come to light today – with the original filings suggesting some attempt on Apple’s part to keep the work secret.
Patent applications are a matter of public record, and there are of course people who make a habit of scouring those filed by Apple in an attempt to get an early steer on potential new products. Apple appears in this case to have attempted to hide its applications …
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Kyle Rittenhouse’s lawyer has made the bizarre claim that the pinch-to-zoom feature on iPads uses artificial intelligence “to create what they believe is happening.”
You can watch him make this argument in the video below, his understanding of technology further demonstrated by his use of the word logarithm instead of algorithm …
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I described the Apple Mail bug I experienced with my new MacBook Pro, which I was relieved to find was not a hardware fault but rather a macOS bug affecting both Apple Silicon and Intel Macs.
It has rendered Mail unusable for now, which led to me trying – and really liking – the Spark email client.
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With the new M1 Pro and M1 Max chips offering huge performance increases, a question occurred to me: Might MacBook Pro cryptocurrency mining be feasible? …
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The CEO of third-party charger and accessory company Anker has said that phone charging times will fall to as little as 20 minutes thanks to new-generation Gallium nitride (GaN) chargers, which are already being adopted by Apple. The time cited is for a full charge from empty to full.
Steven Yang said that Apple’s decision to exclude chargers from iPhone boxes has been extremely good news for companies like his …
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Update: The computer sold for $400k, though the buyer had to pay a total of $500k with the hefty 25% buyer’s premium,.
Yep, it’s time for another Apple-1 computer auction, and this one claims to be more special than most.
Of the 200 computers made, 50 of them were sold through ByteShop as bare boards that required customers to add their own cases, keyboards, monitors, and power supplies. Of these, just six ended up in casings made from Koa wood …
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The UK’s Supreme Court has thrown out a Google Safari workaround class action lawsuit in which iPhone owners could have received as much as £500 ($675) each.
The case alleged that Google breached the privacy of iPhone owners by secretly installing web cookies even after users had blocked them in Safari’s settings …
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I said last time that I hadn’t used my new MacBook Pro for anything too taxing in the first couple of days, but I did have the chance to try some M1 Max video editing last night. Nothing extensive – just a short casual video – but it provided my first opportunity to see the machine in action while performing the kind of task it was designed for.
I was very happy indeed with the performance – but actually, the everyday use impresses me just as much.
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An alleged member of the REvil ransom group has been charged, with $6.1M in funds seized from another suspect, according to the US Department of Justice.
Back in April, we learned that the REvil group accessed systems belonging to Mac assembler Quanta and obtained schematics of the upcoming MacBook Pro models, which accurately revealed the HDMI, MagSafe, and SD card slot …
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Update: TSMC is one of a number of chipmakers to have over ‘partial’ data in response to the demand. The company said (per Bloomberg) that ‘no customer specific information was disclosed.’ A spreadsheet reveals things like capabilities and industry splits, but customer-specific pages have been left blank. TSMC has also left blank pages requesting details of disruptions to its production. It is a near-certainty that the company consulted Apple on what data to reveal and withhold.
In an attempt to better understand the global chip shortage, the US Commerce Department has asked for TSMC company data, along with that of other chipmakers around the world.
The deadline set for this is November 8, and so far it appears Apple’s A-series and M-series chipmaker is among the companies that has not responded.
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With September and October Apple events out of the way, there are still some unannounced but eagerly anticipated Apple products to come by some point next year.
The September event saw the company announce the iPhone 13 lineup, Apple Watch Series 7, iPad mini, and the iPad 9. October’s Unleashed event added the long-awaited 14- and 16-inch M1 MacBook Pros, AirPods 3, and new HomePod mini colors.
But that still leaves us waiting for a number of as-yet unannounced products …
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Apple CEO Tim Cook recently warned that component shortages have had a bigger impact than the company expected, with iPhone 13 supply constraints adding to those affecting iPad and Mac.
A new supply chain report suggests that iPhone 13 supply isn’t expected to catch up with demand until February of next year …
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One of the things I like about Apple’s Magic Keyboard for iPad is that it also serves as a magnetic iPad stand ideal for cooking. It keeps the screen upright and safely off the worktop surface, which are the two requirements when using your iPad as a cookbook. The only drawback is that the orientation is landscape, when portrait mode allows you to see more of the recipe at once.
That’s something the Lululook Urban magnetic iPad stand solves. Clearly modeled on the iMac stand, it can be used in both landscape and portrait modes.
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A $1.3B Apple antitrust fine levied by the French petition regulator was politically motivated, claims a lawyer for the Cupertino company. She said the regulator set out to “grab a GAFA” (Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon) in order to be seen to be taking on Big Tech.
The fine was based on Apple being found to prevent competition among resellers by freezing out some, and forcing others to sell at the same prices as the Cupertino company …
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A new Twitter search button has been added to the iOS app, making it easier to search the tweets of a specific user …
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