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.
The controversy over Apple removing ICEBlock from the App Store is showing no signs of ending. The latest development is a former Apple marketing veteran challenging Tim Cook on the company’s human rights values.
Wiley Hodges worked for Apple for more than 20 years, the last 15 of them as a director of marketing and product management, and he’s written an open letter to Cook expressing his dismay at the decision …
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The secretive AI hardware device designed by former Apple design chief Jony Ive and set to be launched by ChatGPT maker OpenAI has reportedly been delayed, as the company struggles to solve three fundamental problems.
Update: Ive referenced a “family of devices” and said that they had come up with “15-20 really compelling” product ideas – more below …
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A new Apple short film called The Underdogs: Blue Screen of Death has been posted to the company’s YouTube channel as part of an occasional series that was first launched back in 2019.
Eight minutes long, it’s a gentle comedy that highlights the built-in security features of Macs while also showing off a whole range of the company’s ecosystem features …
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Every now and then there is an app or utility whose usefulness is so obvious that you immediately think it ought to be part of macOS.
Folder Quick Look is a great example of this. It does one very simple job – and does it in a way that just seems like it has always been there …
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I may not be a fan personally, but plenty of people seem to love the new Cosmic Orange colour option for the iPhone 17 Pro. While the color is officially exclusive to just two phones, you can now have any of your devices in this color.
Dbrand skins are now available in the new color for a wide range of devices, including the iPhone Air, MacBooks, iPads, AirPods, and even Android phones and Windows laptops …
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We hear occasional good news stories where somebody is able to use Find My iPhone to track a stolen device and successfully recover it, but a new record has been set when tracking a single iPhone led to a gang suspected of smuggling up to 40,000 stolen phones to China.
The iPhone was tracked to an airport warehouse where it was found in a box with 894 other phones, leading to the arrest of 18 suspects and more than 2,000 recovered phones …
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Apple is facing a cybercrime investigation in France over its capture and review of voice recordings to improve the quality of Siri responses.
The probe faces complaints by a human rights organization over a 2019 revelation that Apple was using contractors to listen to voice recordings of Siri interactions by its customers despite its privacy promises …
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Apple has gradually ramped up the capabilities of its iPhone satellite communications services, but a new report suggests that the company may need to switch supplier in order to boost capacity.
The company currently partners with Globalstar for all of its satellite comms services, but two SpaceX developments mean that Apple might switch to Starlink for future services …
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While OpenAI describes its latest iPhone app Sora as a video generation tool, it might be more accurately described as a way for anyone to easily create deepfakes.
You did get to choose whether or not people can use your cameo, aka your likeness, but you initially had almost no control over what they could do with it. Predictably, this did not go well, and the company has now introduced a new safety tool …
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When it comes to favorite technology, Apple gets a double win from me. My MacBook Pro is my single most important piece of tech, and the Apple ecosystem is absolutely core to my approach to a whole range of things, across both work and leisure.
But I also have a number of non-Apple devices that either serve as important accessories or standalone devices in their own right …
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We’ve for some time been expecting a cheaper and lighter version of Vision Pro, possibly branded as Vision Air. Potential launch dates have been variously reported as 2025, 2026, and 2027.
But a report yesterday suggested we may have even longer to wait for this as Apple shifts resources to accelerate work on an Apple Glasses product …
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Direct payments between Venmo and PayPal will finally become possible from November, some 11 years after it was first expected.
While some may find it convenient, it also opens a new route to scammers, so there’s a privacy setting you may wish to change when it goes live …
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Neon, the app that pays you to share your audio recordings with an AI system, says that it will return despite its recent massive security breach.
The app shot up the App Store ratings after promising to pay users hundreds or even thousands of dollars per year for allowing their audio conversations to be used to train AI chatbots …
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We learned back in February that the British government had secretly ordered Apple to create a worldwide backdoor into iCloud. We said at the time that the demand was “as technically clueless as it is outrageous.”
Apple responded very intelligently, and it seemed from a development last month that the UK had withdrawn its demand. We’re learning today that this isn’t in fact the case …
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We’re not expecting to see Apple’s long-awaited combo speaker and smart home control panel until sometime next year. We’ve been using HomePad as a placeholder name, but a leak back in the summer suggests it may be known as the HomePod Touch.
The form factor is expected to be broadly similar to Amazon’s Echo Show, and the company has just announced smarter versions …
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Fitness tech company Peloton really took off during the pandemic, with multiple suggestions that it might be in line for an acquisition by Apple, but has struggled to find its way since then.
The company is today seeking to address this with an almost completely new hardware lineup, with AI features naturally playing a key role. This includes the company’s first commercial treadmill …
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Apple has asked a judge to dismiss a patently absurd claim made by Elon Musk that the iPhone maker is legally obliged to strike a partnership with his xAI company.
Musk’s X Corp is seeking billions of dollars in damages from Apple, claiming that it illegally favors OpenAI’s ChatGPT …
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Epic Games has given Apple a backhanded compliment over the changes it made to reduce the barriers to installing the company’s games store on iPhones.
Apple had long come under antitrust fire for forcing users to take 15 separate steps to install a third-party app store. The company has now reduced that to six steps and eliminated what has been described as a “scare screen with a misleading message” …
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A DoorDash robot has been unveiled by the delivery company, named Dot. Looking vaguely like an extremely red stroller, the company says it’s the first commercial autonomous delivery robot to be able to use any mix of roads, sidewalks, and bike lanes …
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We learned earlier this month that Adobe Premiere for iPhone would be launching today, and it’s now available in the App Store.
Premiere Pro is a popular choice for filmmaking and videography pros, so the availability of an iPhone app comes as good news – but you don’t absolutely need to have the desktop app in order to use it …
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The first generation of Apple Silicon chips took other chip makers by surprise. While everyone knew it would be good, the M1 chip was so far ahead of its competitors in both power and efficiency that there must have been a lot of worried faces in Intel and Qualcomm’s respective boardrooms.
Three generations later, Qualcomm appears to have finally caught up with Apple’s M4 chip with its new Snapdragon X2 Elite Extreme chip, intended for laptops. However, that situation may not last for long …
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I’m a huge fan of smart homes, and there are a great many benefits I value greatly. One of the drawbacks of having been a relatively early adopter, however, is that there’s been a certain amount of trial and error involved.
Most of the things I’ve done I would do again in a new home, but there are a couple of exceptions …
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Expectations that Apple will launch an iPhone Fold next year got further traction from a claimed Samsung announcement.
Update: Samsung has denied making the comments, calling it a “misunderstanding.” See the update at the end …
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Today brings a little flurry of social media app news, including better child protection measures in Meta’s AI chatbot; an expansion of ad-free subscriptions for Facebook and Instagram; and Snapchat starting to charge storage fees for higher volumes of Memories …
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