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.
Long before the iPod, the Sony Walkman was the device of choice for those who wanted to add a soundtrack to their life. Now a Duo-Man app recreates the experience for those of us old enough to have owned one, and you’ll be able to use it with Apple Music …
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The ability of AI systems to act as agents, carrying out tasks on our behalf, is the single biggest development in the technology. This is the headline capability Siri AI introduces to Apple devices, and I’m inclined to trust the privacy and safety safeguards Apple has put into place.
But Siri AI isn’t the only agent you can give full access to your Apple devices, with Meta’s Muse app the latest example – and one tech writer’s experience really underlines why you absolutely don’t want to do this …
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There’s a running joke that Apple always breathlessly announces that each year’s iPhone Pro is “the best iPhone we’ve ever made,” as if that were in some way surprising. But I do think that there’s some poignancy to the iPhone 18 Pro, because if the rumors about next year’s model are true, this could be the final iteration of the form factor that began with the iPhone X back in 2017.
Specifically, we’re expecting next year to see the next big step toward that “single slab of glass” vision which will end the era of evolutionary change we’ve seen over the last decade …
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The first smart glasses were Google Glass, launched way back in 2014. The product failed for a number of reasons, but the biggest of these was privacy concerns around video recording capabilities, leading to users being labeled “glassholes.”
The same phenomenon now seems to have finally caught up with Meta Glasses, leading me to completely change my mind about the requirement for Apple Glasses to have video recording capabilities …
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Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak – aka Woz – generally has a much lower profile than the company’s execs, but he does frequently speak at industry conferences and remains a much-loved figure among Apple fans. Something I did not expect to see, however, was an official Woz merch store …
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General Motors has revealed a CarPlay compromise on two truck models, creating a truck-specific interface that includes CarPlay.
The company says this is consistent with its plans to withdraw CarPlay from EVs while retaining it for gas-powered vehicles …
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Some memory chips for Apple devices could be made in the US for the first time, if plans involving one of the company’s suppliers come to fruition.
A new report says that Apple memory supplier SK Hynix is in talks with Intel over potential use of the company’s planned Ohio chipmaking plant …
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One of the trickier parts of Tim Cook’s job when he was Apple CEO was walking the tightrope of upholding the company’s values without provoking the ire of the White House over things like immigration policy and DEI.
His new role as executive chairman sees him retain responsibility for government liaison, offering replacement CEO John Ternus some degree of protection …
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Apple is working on plans to make enterprise servers powered by M8 Ultra chips, according to a new report. The report specifically says that the company plans to offer the AI-focused servers for sale, not just use them internally.
Two versions are said to be in development, with Apple considering incorporating Nvidia networking tech in the machines …
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Two high-profile computer scientists from Princeton University, and coauthors of the book AI Snake Oil, have weighed in on the question of whether AI will kill us all by the end of the decade.
The pair have become well known for their work in separating fact from fiction in the AI world, and have now responded to an admission by Anthropic that there is a greater than 10% chance that AI could kill all humans within the next ten years …
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A video short highlights Apple’s playful use of James Bond homages in its keynote opening, with shots directly emulating ones from Skyfall …
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It was already clear that Samsung was worried about the impact of the iPhone Duo on its foldable phone range, and there’s now further evidence of the Korean company’s concern.
A blogger who aggregates reports from Chinese social media says there are signs that the company is bringing forward the launch of its Galaxy Z Trifold 2, despite the seeming failure of its predecessor …
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If you’ve just updated your iPhone to iOS 27, you may have felt concerned after seeing your battery draining faster than usual, as well as your device getting hot in normal use.
If so, there’s no cause for panic. While both effects may be very real, they are only temporary …
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Apple may still be cleaning up after the end of the iPhone launch, but attention is already turning to an October event.
There are still a lot of new products we’re expecting the company to unveil, with the most exciting of these including touchscreen MacBooks and a smart home hub we’ve been dubbing the HomePad. But which ones will launch this year, and which ones will have to wait until next year … ?
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Two new Apple Watch features may see the device running up against privacy laws in multiple US states. That’s because the new Live Rewind and Siri Recap features audio-record conversations.
The devil is very much in the detail here, since neither feature makes audio recordings accessible to anyone, and it seems likely that the issue will need to be tested in the courts in order to set a new legal precedent …
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A high-profile analyst has said that demand for the iPhone 18 Pro and Pro Max appears “lukewarm” based on pre-order wait times.
Jeff Pu notes that most iPhone 18 Pro configurations are available for immediate delivery and that the longest wait for the most popular iPhone 18 Pro Max extends only to three to four weeks …
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It’s been more than a year since we asked whether Apple should give us the option of choosing our own AI chatbot to replace Siri AI. At that time, the majority of you were in favor.
A developer who has been studying the code in iOS 27 and macOS 27 has discovered that it does indeed appear at least some people will have this option …
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CNET has a series of pieces comparing the iPhone Duo to three current Android foldables. While it’s a little frustrating to tackle the comparisons separately, it seems clear that the site views Samsung’s Galaxy Z Fold 8 as the device the Duo needs to beat.
That’s in large part because the two devices share similar passport-style aspect ratios rather than the tall and thin design of other foldables, and are priced only $100 apart …
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Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman has made an interesting prediction in his latest newsletter, suggesting that the iPhone Duo is just the start and that most iPhones will be foldable within a decade.
He argues that in that kind of timescale, even budget devices like the iPhone SE could go foldable as manufacturing costs fall …
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The variable aperture lens of the shiny new iPhone 18 Pro goes almost one stop wider than the fixed aperture lens in its predecessor: up from f/1.78 in the iPhone 17 Pro to f/1.48 (a smaller number is wider).
In principle, this will allow for slightly shallower depth of field, enabling greater separation between your subject and the background – although it’s a relatively small difference. But there are four ways to achieve shallow depth of field (DOF) with much older iPhones …
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Those with very long memories might have spotted a resemblance between the iPhone Duo and a prototype device seen way back in 2009, the Microsoft Courier.
My headline is, of course, tongue-in-cheek: Microsoft never got any further than the prototype, and abandoned the project less than a year later. All the same, it is remarkable now to look back at it and see just how similar it is in terms of the integrated user-interface …
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If ever there was a head versus heart moment in terms of Apple tech, it was in yesterday’s unveiling of the new iPhones.
I already started the morning by wiping the drool from my desk after watching the iPhone Duo sections of yesterday’s keynote, but the true hero of yesterday’s show for me was the iPhone 18 Pro/Pro Max, thanks to the new camera features …
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Wow. After Samsung had a seven-year head start on Apple in the foldables market, the company really had to live up to its ethos of waiting until it could do a far better job than everyone else, and boy did it deliver with the iPhone Duo!
It was abundantly clear that Apple had thought through every detail of what a foldable iPhone needed to be, and has taken advantage of every benefit the form factor has to offer …
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We didn’t get the new Apple TV 4K model some had predicted in today’s fast-paced ‘Surprise and shine’ event, but the developer and public Release Candidate (RC) of tvOS 27 is now rolling out …
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