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’s keynote presentation showed an impressive demo of the new iPhone 13 Cinematic Mode, albeit helped enormously by professional acting, lighting, and set design.
Apple’s demo showed five distinct capabilities, all of them based on a video version of Portrait mode to add artificial blur to the background.
Expand Expanding Close
An announcement by Samsung may be revealing future MacBook Pro displays – but not for the models we’re expecting to see later this year …
Expand Expanding Close
Update: A class-action lawsuit has now been filed in California – but by a different firm of lawyers, Bursor & Fisher. The case is 5:21-cv-07109, Almeida v. Apple, Inc.
A class-action lawsuit is being planned on behalf of M1 MacBook owners who say that screen cracks were occurring during normal use, with both the M1 MacBook Air and M1 MacBook Pro affected.
Apple has mostly claimed that the cracks are the result of accidental damage, including in the case of the 9to5Mac reader who first contacted us …
Expand Expanding Close
If I had to write a brutally honest headline for yesterday’s Apple event, it would be: Apple announces exciting new iPad mini (alongside worthwhile updates to Watch and iPhone).
It’s not that the iPhone 13 and Apple Watch Series 7 updates were uninteresting. Indeed, Apple has successfully sold me a new iPhone. It’s just that the improvements were, for most use cases, relatively modest when you compare them to the complete transformation of the iPad mini …
Expand Expanding Close
A new iJustine Tim Cook interview was conducted immediately after yesterday’s Apple event, and posted today.
YouTube creator iJustine has made a career for herself essentially being a professional Apple fan, and doing so charmingly – and the interview was certainly an on-brand one. It covered a few different topics, but you shouldn’t expect any tough questions or new revelations …
Expand Expanding Close
There was one interesting thing missing from yesterday’s keynote: Despite all the time Apple spent talking about the chips, there was no iPhone 13 versus iPhone 12 performance comparison.
Usually, Apple tells us how much faster and more powerful the latest iPhone is compared to the previous model, but this time it didn’t do that – leading some to conclude that there’s a good reason for this …
Expand Expanding Close
Apple has announced a new entry-level iPad with thinner bezels and a faster A13 Bionic processor to replace the A12 chip in the previous model – but you’ll still need to fork out the extra cash for the higher-end iPad Air or iPad Pro if you want a sleeker model without the chin and Home button.
Apple says the A13 chip makes it 20% faster than the previous model, and up to three times faster than the fastest Chromebook …
Expand Expanding Close
Plans for an Apple VR headset continue, with the company reportedly now testing a display panel with a massive pixel density of 3,000 dots per inch (dpi).
Conventional OLED panels max out at 600 dots per inch, and Apple has so far used the term Retina to describe displays as low as 227 dpi …
Expand Expanding Close
New data sheds some light on who is planning on upgrading to the iPhone 13, and what’s happening to their old phones.
iPhone 11 owners top the list of those trading in their existing iPhone in order to buy the latest model …
Expand Expanding Close
The quest for Twitter verification can sometimes feel more like the search for the holy grail, with applications opening and closing at random – but, for now, you will once again be able to apply …
Expand Expanding Close
Last week saw the introduction of an #AppleEvent hashflag on Twitter, and a new animation has now been added when you Like a tweet containing the hashtag …
Expand Expanding Close
If you’re in Europe and looking for a HomeKit-compatible smart lock, you have one more option now. Tedee has announced that the promised HomeKit support has now been added to its existing locks via a firmware update…
Expand Expanding Close
London police chief Cressida Dick has used the 20th anniversary of 9/11 to attack companies like Apple, WhatsApp, Telegram, and Signal for offering end-to-end encrypted message services.
It follows the British Home Secretary – in charge of policing for the UK – seeking tech companies to find some way to break end-to-end encryption …
Expand Expanding Close
Competition between carriers will drive iPhone 13 sales with aggressive deals, say industry commentators, but iPhone subsidies will end at some point.
Carriers have played a significant role in driving demand for iPhones, thanks to fighting each other for market share …
Expand Expanding Close
The anticipated strength of iPhone 13 demand is likely to see Apple account for a full third of global 5G smartphone shipments in 2021, according to a new market intelligence report.
The forecast was made by Counterpoint, which says that demand for this year’s iPhone lineup will be high even without any surprise new features…
Expand Expanding Close
A high-profile activist investor has said that Apple’s antitrust arrogance is dangerous from a regulatory perspective, and damaging to the company’s reputation.
Roger McNamee – who has been described as an important adviser by both Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg – says that if Apple doesn’t compromise, it will be regulated, and won’t like the result…
Expand Expanding Close
The long-running saga of the Apple Irish data center appeared to be over in 2018, when the Cupertino company announced that it had abandoned its plans.
“Several years ago we applied to build a data center at Athenry. Despite our best efforts, delays in the approval process have forced us to make other plans and we will not be able to move forward with the data centre,” said the company in a statement.
However, the project appears to have been revived. Apple successfully applied for an extension to its planning permission, and stated in its application that it expects to build the center within the next five years…
Expand Expanding Close
There will be a lot more Apple Music DJ mixes available on the streaming service, thanks to the Cupertino company’s use of Shazam technology.
Dance mixes have always been a nightmare for any company wanting to broadcast or stream them…
Expand Expanding Close
Facebook has confirmed to me that all WhatsApp messages are end-to-end encrypted, and that a ProPublica report is based on a misunderstanding. Update: ProPublica has added a ‘clarification’ and amended its story to reflect Facebook’s explanation.
Expand Expanding CloseA previous version of this story caused unintended confusion about the extent to which WhatsApp examines its users’ messages and whether it breaks the encryption that keeps the exchanges secret. We’ve altered language in the story to make clear that the company examines only messages from threads that have been reported by users as possibly abusive. It does not break end-to-end encryption.
All four of the main UK mobile carriers have now announced plans to reintroduce roaming charges for customers traveling within Europe, following Brexit …
Expand Expanding Close
The British government has expressed support for Apple’s now-delayed CSAM scanning plans, and says that it wants the ability to scan encrypted messages for CSAM, even where end-to-end encryption is used.
The country is offering to pay anyone who can find a way “to keep children safe in environments such as online messaging platforms with end-to-end encryption” …
Expand Expanding Close
Apple continues its drip strategy of making minimal App Store changes in response to each individual antitrust threat it perceives – and Morgan Stanley analyst Katy Huberty unsurprisingly expects recent developments to have minimal impact on the company’s bottom line.
In a note to investors, Huberty looks at four recent antitrust developments, and estimates the likely hit to Apple’s financial performance …
Expand Expanding Close
Aqara Matter support has been added to two of its existing hubs, which upgrades them to the HomeKit-compatible connectivity standard for smart home devices. Updating the hubs will provide Matter connectivity to much of the company’s product range, including sensors, switches, and plugs.
The company says that Matter compatibility is coming first to two hubs, the Aqara M1S and M2 …
Expand Expanding Close
Privacy and civil rights activists say that a US GDPR-style federal privacy law should be passed to replace the confusing mass of federal and state laws in place at present. This is an approach also favored by Apple, which wants the simplicity of a single set of privacy requirements across the US.
In the European Union, the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) provides the strongest protections ever seen for consumer data, all within a single piece of legislation. The US, in contrast, has no fewer than eight different federal privacy laws, and a mass of current and planned state ones …
Expand Expanding Close