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.
Police and other law enforcement agencies requesting Ring video surveillance footage to help solve crimes will now need to make those requests in public. Previously, they had the ability to email Ring users to request copies of video that might show crimes in progress, or otherwise help to bring criminals to justice …
Expand Expanding Close
It’s been almost two years since the first reliable rumor that there is a WhatsApp iPad app in the works, but the company has now dropped an official hint that this may finally be arriving in the coming months.
An interview with Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and WhatsApp CEO Will Cathcart also officially confirmed reports of a disappearing messages feature …
Expand Expanding Close
The Philips Hue app has been redesigned from scratch, greatly simplifying things like renaming lamps and moving them between rooms. Things that once required delving into the settings, sometimes two different places in Settings, can now be done right from the main screen.
The company says that there is more to come later in the year, including Dynamic Scenes, where the colors change gradually over time …
Expand Expanding Close
An Apple Silicon Mac Pro concept provides an unusual take on one of the most controversial aspects of the two most recent designs – should expansion units sit inside or outside the machine?
Expand Expanding Close
Okay, it’s a rather obvious PSA not to install a Chinese web browser on your iPhone, but Alibaba’s UC Browser is actually the fourth most popular browser in the world by user numbers, and the eighth most downloaded mobile app in the last decade …
Expand Expanding Close
Apple’s Fortune 500 ranking has moved back up to third place, after being knocked into fourth place last year by Exxon Mobil.
Fortune has this year added an additional ranking, for diversity, equity and inclusion – and there Apple gets a rather low ranking of 188th …
Expand Expanding Close
The Twitter verification program has reopened to applications after the company was apparently taken by surprise by the number of applications.
Getting the coveted blue checkmark has been a long process for some people. Twitter previously had a rather opaque approach, which gave little clue as to the criteria for verifying accounts …
Expand Expanding Close
Bribery charges leveled against Apple security chief Thomas Moyer have been dropped by a Superior Court judge, who said that there was no evidence to support the prosecution. The same is true of two police officers.
The case was a bizarre one, in which prosecutors alleged Moyer offered $70,000 worth of iPads in exchange for granting concealed weapons permits to members of Apple’s executive protection team …
Expand Expanding Close
Spotify’s chief legal officer Horacio Gutierrez has said that he likes Apple products but considers the company a disingenuous bully.
Gutierrez made the remarks in an op-ed in the WSJ, and in an interview with The Verge …
Expand Expanding Close
There aren’t too many Apple Pay competitors at present. Over on Android, there is Google Pay and Samsung Pay, but Apple could soon see some competition on iPhone from an unlikely source.
The European Union is planning to create a digital wallet that would work in all 27 member countries …
Expand Expanding Close
Update: The pair have now posted a video of the rescue, added to the bottom of the post.
A German iPhone 12 Pro owner has invented the sport of MagSafe fishing, using a magnetic fishing line to successfully locate and retrieve his phone from a muddy canal bottom …
Expand Expanding Close
The WSJ has published its annual ranking of CEO pay and compensation packages for S&P 500 companies, and Apple’s Tim Cook only takes 171st place despite AAPL sitting at the top of the index by company worth.
Standard and Poor’s 500 (S&P 500) ranks US companies by market capitalization, putting AAPL in first place with its value of more than 2 trillion dollars …
Expand Expanding Close
If you own any one of a number of Amazon devices, and are in the US, you have just over a week to opt out of a feature the company calls Amazon Sidewalk, to avoid potential security and privacy issues …
Expand Expanding Close
The one-sided Intel versus Apple battle has seen the chipmaker raging ever since Apple announced the switch from Intel Macs to Apple Silicon ones. Intel’s latest attack on Macs, however, is something of an own goal.
Attempting to show the superiority of Windows PCs over Macs, the chipmaker makes a comparison with an Intel-powered Mac …
Expand Expanding Close
The announcement of AssistiveTouch on Apple Watch caused a great deal of excitement among those with motor disabilities, with many others impressed by the sheer technological achievement of it.
An analyst believes that we’re only seeing the tip of the iceberg in terms of the uses for this particular feature…
Expand Expanding Close
If you want to be alerted to security breaches of user IDs and passwords, Have I Been Pwned (HIBP) is one of the most useful sites around – and it’s about to get even more so …
Expand Expanding Close
I’ve been waiting impatiently for the M1X 16-inch MacBook Pro ever since we got to see just how stunning the 13-inch machine is, in terms of both performance and battery life. If the latest rumor is correct, and it is launched at WWDC, I may not have too much longer to wait.
I am, however, expecting it to be a very expensive upgrade, for three reasons…
Expand Expanding Close
A new Lime Prime subscription is intended to bridge the gap between those who use Lime electric bikes, scooters, or mopeds often enough to justify a Lime Pass, and those who opt for occasional pay-as-you-go usage …
Expand Expanding Close
The latest patent troll to sue Apple serves as a textbook example of the need for patent reform. A company called BillJCo, aka LBX Technologies, is essentially trying to claim ownership over the concept of short-range communication between devices using Bluetooth …
Expand Expanding Close
With the new iPad Pro models out, there has been another flurry of comments about the urgent need for an iPadOS update to allow the software to catch up with the hardware.
I absolutely agree – but for me, none of the rumored improvements expected from iPadOS 15 address the single biggest difference between an iPad and a Mac…
Expand Expanding Close
It’s been announced today that Amazon is buying MGM Studios for $8.45B, in a move likely to see existing franchises see new life via the company’s film and TV division, Amazon Studios …
Expand Expanding Close
An iOS app rating flaw lets developers create apps that cannot be opened until the user gives it a five-star review.
It’s the latest discovery by FlickType developer Kosta Eleftheriou, whose Twitter bio now describes him as “Professional AppStore critic.” Eleftheriou has indeed made a name for himself identifying high-profile scam apps that made it through app review, some of which have made millions of dollars for their developers …
Expand Expanding Close
An M1 security vulnerability has been discovered that likely cannot be mitigated by Apple, but the researcher who found it says it’s not something we need to worry about …
Expand Expanding Close
The announcement of a new USB-C 240W Power Delivery standard means that far more powerful laptops and other devices can be powered by the now-ubiquitous reversible plug.
The bad news, however, is it means the creation of yet another USB-C cable standard …
Expand Expanding Close