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.
Apple has been roundly criticized for falling behind in AI, and for its rather disastrous Apple Intelligence launch in which it was forced to admit it had promised things it couldn’t deliver.
The second criticism is valid, the first only partly so. But a new report suggests that Apple’s path to delivering on its AI promises may be a radical one: abandoning work on its own model. I do now think that’s absolutely the right thing to do …
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As Apple itself recently noted, most new year’s resolutions don’t last very long. When it comes to daily gym visits and diets, so many people have given up by the second Friday in January that it has come to be known as Quitter’s Day.
But there are some steps you can take with your Apple devices that make it extremely easy to keep up new habits once you’ve done the simple prep …
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Consumer reviews used to be one of the most reliable ways of assessing the quality of an app or a physical product. If you didn’t know any friends who’d tried it, the number of reviews and the average rating was a pretty good guide.
Sadly, however, that is no longer the case. Companies have become very adept at gaming the system, meaning that reviews are worth way less than they used to be. There are now six reasons you shouldn’t necessarily trust them, including one I only learned about today …
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The Shure MV88 mic used to be the perfect microphone for any iPhone owner who wanted high quality recordings with maximum convenience. With a Lightning connector, it plugged directly into your iPhone.
The company inexplicably failed to update it for many years after Apple switched to USB-C, but has finally corrected this – and may solve a common problem seen on YouTube …
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At least some of the camera sensors for the iPhone 18 Pro look set to be made in the USA, at a Samsung plant in Austin, Texas.
Production of advanced image sensors for Apple is expected to begin sometime around March, suggesting that they will be destined for the iPhone 18 Pro …
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The effectiveness of the Apple Developer Academy training provided in Detroit has been called into question, alongside the value for money it offers.
A previously unreported funding breakdown shows that although Apple made the largest contribution to the program, more than half as much comes from Michigan taxpayers …
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The version of Apple Intelligence released in China must pass a test to ensure that it does nothing to challenge official government propaganda.
It will be tested with 2,000 questions designed to elicit information censored within the country, and it must refuse to answer at least 95% of them …
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Photos and video footage of a simple printed mock-up of an iPhone Fold gave us a decent sense of how the device might look if the most recent rumour about the aspect ratios is accurate. While the exterior display shape would be a radical departure, more 9to5Mac readers liked it than disliked it.
If you want to get an even better sense of how the device might feel, and have access to a 3D printer, you can create a physical mock-up using files provided online …
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The Lowfree Flow84 is the latest episode in my on-again, off-again love affair with mechanical keyboards. I describe it as the mechanical keyboard Apple would make for a mix of good and bad reasons, but we’ll get to that! Update: There is a new version with touch sliders for volume and brightness – see the Pricing & conclusions section at the end.
It’s one of a relatively new breed of low-profile mechanical keyboards, something that would have seemed a contradiction in terms just a few years earlier …
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We’ve so far been assuming that the iPhone Fold would have a familiar aspect ratio on the exterior display, opening out into an interior screen which is taller than it is wide.
However, a recent report suggested that the interior screen will be wider than it is tall, and some physical mockups give us an indication of how this might look …
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Pirate site Anna’s Archive, which describes itself as “the largest truly open library in human history,” says that it has scraped 99.6% of all the music people listen to from Spotify.
It says the total data downloaded is a little under 300TB in size and that it will be making this available for torrenting …
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The European Union has taken credit for new interoperability features in iOS 26.3. The bloc says that this will create a market for new innovative products and services.
The latest beta release has a strong focus on making iOS more open, including much better support for third-party smartwatches …
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A comment in a Reddit thread was what led police and FBI investigators to identify the Brown University shooter. Rhode Island Attorney General Peter Neronha said the comment on Reddit was what enabled police to track down the rental car which enabled them to identify the shooter …
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A leaker with a good track record says that suppliers are gearing up for iPhone 18 production as the company prepares for its new split-launch plan.
The new strategy will see the base model iPhone 18 go on sale earlier in the year, with production potentially underway by mid-February …
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We’ve recently seen how ChatGPT was used to trick Mac users into installing MacStealer, and now a different tactic has been found to persuade users to install a version of MacSync Stealer.
The Mac remains a relatively difficult target for attackers thanks to Apple’s protections against the installation of malware. However, Mac malware is on the increase, and two recently-discovered tactics discovered by security researchers highlight the creative approaches some attackers are using …
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Instagram long-form videos have previously been a possibility the company has ruled out, but its head Adam Mosseri now says that it might be that the platform needs it.
One thing he is promising is a way to allow users to “proactively shape content in their feeds,” although you shouldn’t hold your breath for this …
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While Apple is currently lobbying against being given a legal responsibility for age verification when it comes to downloading apps, I think the company’s customers would very much benefit from it taking on this role.
Given the company’s track record in finding privacy-respecting approaches to personal data, I would like to see it go even further than the proposals we’ve seen to date …
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A new Snapchat Quick Cut feature has been launched, which enables you to automatically create music-synced videos in just a few seconds. The feature is exclusive to the iPhone for now, with Android support promised for a later date …
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The safety of buying Apple gift cards from anywhere other than the company itself has been called into question after a frankly terrifying story of a well-known developer and author getting locked out of his account.
Organizer of the /dev/world conference Paris Buttfield-Addison described what happened after he attempted to redeem an Apple gift card purchased from a well-known bricks-and-mortar retailer …
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We’re expecting to see an OLED MacBook Pro launching next year as part of a major redesign, but we haven’t previously heard anything about when Apple might bring the display tech to the iMac.
A new supply chain report says that Apple is now working on this, but there are a couple of key things to note …
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Another country, another continuation of the ongoing antitrust battle between Epic Games and Apple over third-party app stores.
While Apple has enabled support for third-party app stores within another country, Epic CEO Tim Sweeney isn’t happy with the arrangements …
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The iPhone Air appears to have been one of the least successful iPhones ever, but it seems that hasn’t discouraged Apple from trying again in 2027 with an iPhone Air 2.
The latest report suggests that the company may fix the two biggest problems with the device, and if accurate, I would expect the 2nd-gen model to be significantly more popular …
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Many social media apps encourage you to give them access to your contacts. If you do so, they will let you know which of your contacts are on the platform so that you can send them a friend request.
This can be problematic because you may not wish to share your online presence with everybody in your contacts, and because you are effectively sharing the personal data of other people without their consent. Bluesky says its own “privacy-first” approach is different …
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Back in the summer, a new Apple Manufacturing Academy was announced, partnering with Michigan State University. The initiative provides free training and consultancy to American businesses to help them innovate their production processes.
Small businesses that received help from Apple engineers said that the company shared frank lessons about its “bendgate” experience …
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