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.
HomeKit dramatically improved the user-friendliness of both configuring and controlling smart homes, by allowing everything to be done though a single app.
But while the Home app was a fantastic breakthrough for its time, technology has moved on, and I think Apple needs to respond. Here are three advanced features I’d like to see in the AI age …
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macOS 26 brings a major new user–interface to the Mac, as well as some powerful new functionality. Apple has also updated a lot of its own apps, in addition to bringing three apps to the Mac for the first time.
Here’s what the company has to share …
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Apple trade-in values have been cut for most models of iPhone, all Macs, several Apple Watches, and one iPad.
Additionally, there are two older Apple products the company will no longer accept as trade-in against a new one, making them officially worthless …
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Authorities came under fire when it was suggested there were no warnings of the flash floods in Texas, which resulted in at least 120 lives being lost, with many more people still missing.
In fact, the Wireless Emergency Alerts system was used to send multiple warnings, but a number of issues meant that many Texans didn’t receive them or act on them – and a new report suggests that’s a hard problem to fix …
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An iPhone Fold production line is being prepared in readiness for the launch of the first folding iPhone next year, and a new supply-chain report says that this is almost ready to begin production. The news follows a recent report that Apple is currently testing realistic prototypes of the device.
The plant will reportedly have the capacity to produce displays for around twice as many devices as Apple actually expects to sell …
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Nvidia, the US company specializing in high-performance GPU cards, has become the first ever company with a market capitalization of four trillion dollars. It is now the most valuable company in the world, ahead of Apple and Microsoft.
It’s a little over a year since the company overtook AAPL thanks to a spectacular rise in value that saw it go from being worth $2T to more than $3T in just four months …
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A “click to cancel” law was last month passed in California, and now the FTC has ratified a federal rule designed to achieve the same goal. The idea of both is to force companies to make it as easy to cancel an online or app subscription as it is to sign up in the first place.
Update: Following a court challenge, the US Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals has vacated the rule. See update at the end …
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X owner Elon Musk recently implemented changes to the platform’s AI chatbot Grok, explicitly telling it not to trust mainstream media and to be less politically correct. Obviously there was no way anyone could possibly predict how that would turn out, so it’s a complete shock that Musk has been forced to silence it …
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HomeKit compatibility used to attract a noticeable price premium when buying smart home products, but the Matter standard is changing that – and Ikea is now going all-in on this.
The company says that it has more than 20 new affordable Matter-compatible smart home devices in the works, with likely plans to expand into completely new product types too …
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The HBO streaming video app became HBO Max when the company added Warner Bros movies and Turner TV shows. In the worst rebrand since Twitter became X, the company later dropped the unique and valuable HBO part of the name and kept the generic and worthless Max part.
Two years later, the company is fixing that. It today becomes HBO Max once more – and this time around, your apps should automatically update …
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Apple Arcade is getting four new games next month, with Play-Doh World topping the bill. Apple says this and the other games will be available from August 7.
The other new titles are Worms Across Worlds, the latest addition to the Worms franchise; the 3D puzzle game Let’s Go Mightycat!; and Everybody Shogi, described as a vibrant strategy game based on the traditional Japanese board game …
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A new supply-chain report suggests that the iPhone 17e will launch next spring, which is in line with previous reporting.
It doesn’t sound like the upcoming model will be a major update, with today’s report indicating that it will use the exact same display as the iPhone 16e …
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A leaker with a mixed track record has suggested that the “main” color option for the upcoming iPhone 17 Air will be a “very light” blue.
They go on to say that the color will be so faint that it will simply appear to be white in some lights. This seems reminiscent of “barely blue” colors we’ve seen from Apple before …
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Macs and Apple Watches are among the products to be hit by new tariffs on products manufactured in Thailand, taking effect on August 1.
Products imported from Thailand into the US will be subjected to a 36% tariff, increasing the cost to Apple by more than a third …
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The United States Customs and Border Protection (CBP) is seeking pitches from tech companies for a forensic tool intended to find “hidden language” in messages on smartphones searched at the border …
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White House condemnation of a free app has drawn substantial attention to it, helping ICEBlock become the most popular social networking app in the App Store, beating out apps like X and Instagram.
ICEBlock alerts people to sightings of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents in their area, following a major immigration crackdown by the White House. Update: The US attorney general has said the app’s developer “had better watch out” – see end of the piece …
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The ongoing TikTok saga rumbles on, but a new report claims that we may be close to a resolution. It says US TikTok users will get their own version of the app, which will be owned by an American company.
The latest development happens shortly after we got sight of the letter sent to Apple to persuade the company to return TikTok to the App Store despite it being illegal to do so …
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New York’s flagship Fifth Avenue Apple Store was spray-painted by climate change protesters, calling for a boycott of the company.
Three slogans were sprayed onto the glass frontage of the store, with Extinction Rebellion accusing Apple of hypocrisy on environmental issues …
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Apple puts its products through a lot of tests during the development process, intended to ensure they have a long and reliable life even in challenging conditions. The company tests at least 10,000 iPhones prior to launch in an attempt to cover all the bases.
It’s not often the iPhone maker lets outsiders into its labs, but Apple invited some of those attending WWDC 2025 to visit one to see for themselves the conditions it expects its gadgets to survive …
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iPhones and Android smartphones started to play more nicely together after Apple finally opted to support the Rich Communication Services (RCS) standard. Prior to this, messages between the two platforms had to use the ancient and insecure text messaging service.
Not all RCS features are supported as yet, with the all-important strong encryption waiting for RCS 3.0 support in iOS 26. Another RCS 3.0 feature is the ability to edit outgoing messages after sending them, and that one has started a limited one-way rollout …
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A pair of market intelligence reports show that the Apple Watch and AirPods continue to dominate the global market in their respective categories.
However, Apple’s long-held lead in the smartwatch market is now being challenged by Huawei, according to the latest estimates …
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A alarming new study has found that som teen drivers in the US spend as much as 21% of their time at the wheel looking at their phones, creating a substantial risk of distracted driving crashes.
While much of this was brief glances, more than 5% of driving time comprised looking at their phone for 2+ seconds a time, long enough to qualify as dangerous …
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The long-rumored iPhone Fold – the colloquial term used for the company’s unannounced folding iPhone – is reported to be on schedule for a potential launch in the second half of next year.
The device is said to have reached the Prototype 1 (P1) stage last month, which is the first point at which the company creates fully-functional devices …
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