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.
It’s been close to a decade since I first started being grumpy about subscription apps. I did acknowledge the benefits right from the start, including giving many developers a more sustainable income, but expressed my unease about where we were headed.
A few years later, I voiced doubts as to whether it was a sustainable business model. But the trend has continued to grow, with Apple Creator Studio the latest example …
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At this point, I kind of have to feel sorry for Roblox. The company came under increasing criticism for failing to adequately protect children, and then courted even greater controversy when it started requiring children as young as nine years old to submit a video selfie for age verification.
The latest development in the saga is that the age verification process appears to be failing badly, with the company saying that you can’t expect everything to work on day one …
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I still have affectionate feelings about the original Macintosh I owned back in 1984, and if you feel the same, you can now give your iPhone 17 Pro a nostalgic makeover …
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The first M5-powered MacBook Pro launched in October of last year. Apple described the chip as offering “the next big leap in AI for the Mac.”
There was no update for the 16-inch MacBook Pro, however, and we are expecting this to happen soon – including M5 Pro and M5 Max options. Apple may now have hinted that the launch date for these will be January 28 …
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Apple has long made its own productivity apps completely free to use on any of its hardware, but that’s about to change.
While core features will remain free, Pages, Numbers, Keynote, and Freeform are set to get AI and premium content which will require a paid subscription …
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One of the things I noticed after upgrading to macOS 26 was that I would sometimes fail when trying to resize windows – I’d try to grab the corner, but nothing would happen.
It turns out that this isn’t clumsiness on my part, but rather a design error by Apple – and that’s because the corners of windows aren’t really rounded …
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Apple yesterday confirmed reports that it was partnering with Google’s Gemini to provide the AI features for Siri and more.
The primary reason for the announcement couldn’t have been made any clearer by the way the company chose to release the news …
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Apple is participating in a week-long event intended to test the real-world performance of the standard behind Car Key.
Participating carmakers in the Plugfest event organized by the Car Connectivity Consortium include BMW, General Motors, Hyundai, Mercedes, Rivian, and VW …
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If you’ve received an Instagram password reset email, claiming that you requested it, you should ignore it.
Malwarebytes reports that cybercriminals stole Instagram account details for 17.5 million users, but the social network claims that there was no security breach …
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Two countries have blocked the Grok app after it was widely used to generate non-consensual near-nude deepfakes of women and children. A third country is currently carrying out an investigation.
Three US senators have asked Apple to temporarily remove both X and Grok from the US App Store due to “sickening content generation,” and we are still awaiting the company’s response …
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Apple is fighting many elements of a list of 83 security requirements proposed by the Indian government. This reportedly includes a requirement to hand over iOS source code.
Reuters reports the government saying that it must be able to review the source code of all smartphones in order to allow vulnerabilities to identified …
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After two years of Apple and Samsung being neck and neck in the smartphone market share stakes, iPhone market share beat out the Korean company by the end of last year, according to a new market intelligence report.
Apple also enjoyed by far the largest year-on-year growth in smartphone shipments, and that wasn’t just due to the success of the iPhone 17 lineup …
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My Mac history is … fairly lengthy, starting with the original Macintosh when it launched way back in 1984. I’m not sure I could even reliably count the number of models I’ve owned since then.
For most of the time since, I’ve owned one Mac at a time. There was a previous period when I owned two Macs, and a return to that approach last year has really paid off …
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Choosing between a conventional watch and an Apple Watch can be tricky, especially if you love mechanical watches but still want the features of its high-tech offspring. But the creators of what may be the most ridiculous Apple Watch accessory yet think you shouldn’t have to choose …
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Apple Watch blood sugar monitoring is something the company reportedly wanted to do right from the start. A report back in 2023 said that the very first Apple Watch was initially intended to launch with non-invasive glucose measurement as a headline feature.
There have been numerous reports since then, a number of them claiming that the health feature would launch in whatever the upcoming Apple Watch was at the time. More than a decade later, it still hasn’t happened, but the launch of a new device suggests that we might be getting closer …
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Apple’s Back to School deals in the US and Europe don’t launch until the summer, but they are live in several countries that get them much earlier in the year.
In addition to the normal education discounts, you can choose from one of a number of free accessories when buying an iPad, MacBook, or iMac …
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If the Logitech mouse you use with your Mac has stopped working properly, it’s not just you – and the problem has occurred for a very embarrassing reason.
The problem means the app cannot even be automatically updated to resolve the issue. Instead, you’ll have to manually install a patch …
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Weibo leaker Digital Chat Station suggests that future iPhones may get multispectral camera sensors. While this could, in theory, provide improved color accuracy and better low-light performance, we shouldn’t get overly excited.
The technology has already been seen in a smartphone, but the results weren’t particularly impressive and the technology is mostly used in military and industrial cameras …
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Roblox, one of the most popular kids’ apps in the world, is now requiring children as young as nine years old to submit a video selfie for age verification. Update: Following a partial launch in December of last year, the requirement is now being rolled out globally. The company says you will see the update within the next week.
While the developer is doing this for good reasons, it adds further weight to the argument that Apple and Google, rather than individual app developers, should be responsible for age verification …
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It’s been over a year since we first heard about Apple’s plans for a total redesign of the MacBook Pro, and we’re expecting to see the results later this year.
While the Cupertino company is predictably expected to head even further down the path of thinner and sleeker laptops, it’s interesting to note that several PC brands are headed in the opposite direction …
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Philips Hue lighting scenes are about to get a lot more sophisticated thanks to an upcoming feature called SpatialAware.
Rather than mix scene colors randomly between different lights in a room, the new feature knows where each light is positioned and can use that information to create a much more coherent look …
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The Aqara Smart Lock U400 has been launched today at CES with support for the Home key feature in Apple Wallet. This means your door can automatically unlock as you approach it from the outside, with no user action required.
It uses ultra-wideband technology to detect someone carrying an iPhone or wearing an Apple Watch registered with the lock …
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macOS Tahoe app icons came under fire late last year with commenters describing them as “terrible” and “objectively bad.” In our poll, 9to5Mac readers had exceedingly mixed views.
Software engineer Nikita Prokopov has now drawn attention to the icons used within menus and pointed out that they almost exactly mirror the approach which Apple’s Macintosh Human Interface Guidelines advised against back in 1992 …
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Samsung has shown off a prototype of a new folding display, and it seems very likely that this is the one that will be used for the iPhone Fold.
Apple had reportedly waited until the company was able to produce a display without a visible crease, and this one looks to fit the bill perfectly. The crease looks completely invisible in a photo and almost so in a video …
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