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.
Verizon’s BlueJeans Telehealth service is letting patients securely share Apple Health data with doctors during video consultations.
The type of data stored in the Apple Health app can prove extremely helpful to doctors in gathering a full picture of your health. ECG readings and heart rate can be particularly valuable, and these are among the records the platform allows you to share …
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Instagram harassment made the mainstream news recently when Black soccer players were subjected to racist abuse after the recent Euro 2020 final. The social network has now announced a new feature to protect against this, and strengthened two existing measures …
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While most of the concerns about governments misusing CSAM scanning to detect things like political opposition have related to foreign governments, some have suggested that it could become an issue in the US, too.
Matt Tait, COO of security company Corellium, and a former analyst at British NSA equivalent GCHQ, says the Fourth Amendment means that this could not happen in the US …
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TikTok became the most popular social app in the world in 2020, overtaking Facebook and WhatsApp, shows an App Annie analysis…
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The Twitter photo-cropping feature, which uses machine learning to decide which part of a photo to show in user feeds, was accused of being racist and sexist last year, when it was found more likely to crop out Black people and women.
The company announced a bug bounty for anyone able to prove biases in its algorithms, and has now named the winners, who variously proved a number of biases …
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Five days after Apple’s child protection measures were announced, there has been no let-up in the controversy surrounding the upcoming new features. Latest to comment is Facebook’s former security chief and now Stanford cybersecurity professor Alex Stamos.
Stamos says that there are no easy answers here, and calls for more nuanced discussion than the prevailing narratives that this is either a great move or an unacceptable one …
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Samsung is preparing to adopt a new process likely to be used in the production of OLED iPad screens next year, according to a new supply chain report.
The report says the company is expecting orders from Apple for a process specifically designed for OLED screens 10 inches and larger …
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All the main UK mobile carriers promised they had no plans to reintroduce European roaming charges after Brexit. EE was the first to do a U-turn, and now Vodafone has followed suit…
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Home-based Apple call center workers in Colombia have expressed privacy concerns over plans to install AI-powered cameras in their homes, to monitor their performance. The same issue has arisen over Apple UK workers based in Albania.
Apple outsources some of its call center work around the world to Teleperformance, and employees say they are being pressured to sign a contract agreeing to the cameras, despite an Apple policy prohibiting it …
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If you’re waiting impatiently for the upcoming M1X-powered MacBook Pro machines, a new supply-chain report says that 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pro production is now underway.
There’s still no certainty as to when the new machines will go on sale, however …
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Apple has responded to misconceptions and concerns about its photo scanning announcements by publishing a CSAM FAQ – answering frequently asked questions about the features.
While child safety organizations welcomed Apple’s plans to help detect possession of child sexual abuse materials (CSAM), and to protect children from predators, there has been a mix of informed and uninformed criticism …
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We learned in June that Apple suppliers in China were having to increase bonuses to help them recruit enough iPhone 13 workers, and a new report today says that they are still struggling to do so.
Both Foxconn and Pegatron were already offering bonuses worth well over a month’s average salary, but even this has not proved sufficient…
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The announcement yesterday of Apple’s child protection measures confirmed an earlier report that the company would begin scanning for child abuse photos on iPhones. The news has seen mixed reactions from experts in both cybersecurity and child safety.
Four concerns had already been raised before the details were known, and Apple’s announcement addressed two of them …
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The first physical Indian Apple Store, due to open later this year, has been delayed due to COVID-19, the company has confirmed. The country was very badly hit by the pandemic, with more than 30 million cases and over 400,000 deaths.
Apple has already had to wait many years to get the go-ahead to open its first retail store, due to legal requirements laid down by the government …
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Walter Isaacson ran into controversy when he wrote his lengthy biography on Apple cofounder Steve Jobs a decade ago. But that apparently hasn’t deterred him from tackling tech guru bios, as he is now writing an Elon Musk biography …
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A report this morning said that Apple is set to announce that it will begin scanning for child abuse images on iPhones. Update: Apple later confirmed the report.
The method Apple is expected to use is one that maximizes privacy, but we noted earlier that there are still a number of ways in which this could go badly wrong …
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Amazon has now launched IMDb TV iPhone and iPad apps, letting US Apple users easily stream a mix of popular TV shows and Amazon originals at no cost. An Android app is also available.
The app will also provide early access to Universal movies under a recently signed deal …
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The story of the Robinhood stock trading app has come full circle. Once host to stock-pumping that saw near-worthless stocks like GME reach stratospheric levels before the app paused trading in them, the app has now paused trading in its own stock as a temporary trading halt was imposed …
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A Portland lawyer used AirTags to track homeless people’s belongings, to prove that they were being illegally trashed by city contractors.
The possessions tracked included a speaker, two paintings, and a coffee press …
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An iPhone camera embedded into the display is likely Apple’s long-term plan as it works toward its ambition of an iPhone being effectively “a single slab of glass.” That possibility got a step closer today as two early players both claim to have improved on the fledgling technology.
We saw some first attempts more than a year ago, but the results weren’t very impressive …
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The Sprint LTE network will shut down by June 30, 2022, as T-Mobile continues moving customers onto its own network following last year’s merger …
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Apple has given Chinese electronics maker Luxshare Precision Industry a big promotion, tapping the company for iPhone 13 production alongside Foxconn and Pegatron. A plan for this was first suggested more than a year ago, and is seemingly now confirmed.
The company currently makes several iPhone components, but this move by Apple is a highly unusual one, letting a new assembler make the latest flagship models …
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One important detail we mentioned in the main piece is worth highlighting: the Magic Keyboard with Touch ID only works with Apple Silicon Macs …
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ING Belgium has announced its long-awaited support for Apple Pay in Belgium, some two years after the bank launched it in the Netherlands.
Users have reported being able to add debit cards but not credit cards, but this appears to be a temporary glitch as the bank has stated that both are supported …
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