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.
Samsung has introduced a new privacy feature to its Galaxy S26 Ultra smartphone, and a new report suggests that future MacBooks may adopt the same technology.
If so, it will be rather ironic as MacBooks were among the earliest laptops to benefit from a feature which can now sometimes be considered a bug …
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When the first rumors of a folding iPhone emerged, we didn’t know which of the two possible formats Apple was planning: an iPhone Fold or an iPhone Flip.
It later became clear that what we’re expecting to be launched first is a book-style iPhone Fold. However, there are signs that we may get both …
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I’m just about starting to believe that I may be heading into the final stages of an extremely lengthy attempt to sell one apartment and buy another, so I’m currently giving some thought to the smart home technology I’ll want in my new home.
This will be some 13 years after I first adopted smart home tech, so I’m expecting to make a few changes – some small, one potentially much larger …
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Anthropic has just launched significant new features to Claude’s free tier. Connecting to apps was previously a pro feature available only to paid subscribers, but this is now included in the free tier.
Claude can connect to a wide range of apps, including Canva, Figma, Monday, Notion, Slack, Square, Wix, WordPress, and Google Workspace apps …
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Domestic robots have been a fixture in science fiction novels for more than a century, but in the real world we’re still all doing our own domestic chores barring vacuuming.
While a number of companies are working on humanoid robots, with Apple reportedly among them, all we’ve really had so far are promises and extremely limited demos. But you can (maybe) buy a laundry-folding robot today for $8,000 or rent it for $450 a month …
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Both WhatsApp and Telegram have been blocked in Russia as the government tries to force people to use its unencrypted WeChat clone, Max. All messages sent and received in Max can be read by the government.
The government also blocked access to Facebook and Instagram, and designated parent company Meta as “an extremist organization” …
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When Apple launched the Apple Creator Studio (ACS) subscription, the company indicated that you could use the AI features to produce 50 Keynote presentations per month “as a minimum.” However, developer and security researcher Steve Troughton-Smith had a very different experience when it came to AI usage limits.
He reported that far from being able to produce 50 presentations, a single Keynote slideshow used half of his monthly ACS limit, so the limit would be just two …
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A number of major tech companies have agreed to submit to independent grading of the mental health impacts of using their apps. Platforms on board at the launch of the Safe Online Standards initiative include Discord, YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, Pinterest, Roblox, and Twitch …
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Amazon apparently thought the world would respond with a collective “awww” when it announced an expansion of its Ring Search Party feature to help find lost dogs, promoted via a 30-second Super Bowl ad (below). Instead, it’s being widely panned as a dystopian move in the current climate.
Since the company has recently rolled out a facial recognition capability for the Ring video doorbell, people drew the obvious and exceedingly short line between surveilling for dogs to surveilling for people …
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Apple is believed to be on a gradual journey that began with Emergency SOS via Satellite on the iPhone 14 back in 2022 and will at some point progress to full 5G access via satellite, bypassing ground-based antenna altogether.
It’s previously been suggested that the iPhone 18 Pro might take a significant step in this direction with support for 5G over satellite links. A new report today adds weight to that idea …
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The mysterious AI hardware device designed by Jony Ive for OpenAI has been delayed, according to a new court filing. It had originally been scheduled to launch later this year but now won’t ship any earlier than February 2027.
The same court paperwork also reveals that the company is no longer planning to use the name io for the upcoming device …
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One of the more persistent and long-standing Apple rumors has been the launch of new AirPods models with built-in cameras. Another leaker added their support for this idea just yesterday.
Exactly what role these cameras would perform has been the subject of much speculation, with some suggesting they will be used to support Apple Intelligence visual features. While that is certainly possible, I can’t help wondering whether the reports point to support for hand gestures similar to those used with Vision Pro …
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Apple has responded to complaints that it abuses its dominant position in the iPhone app market by making four promises to third-party developers about fairer treatment.
Developers and others are being asked for their comments on the proposals, and the UK’s antitrust regulator says it will be closely measuring the effectiveness of the measures …
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Apple recently reported the best iPhone sales in the company’s history in the final quarter of last year. While the long-term trend has of course been upward, the company revealed a dramatic boost to the numbers.
We’ve already seen analysts describe some of the reasons for this, but a new report suggests two additional factors – and both of them are the color orange …
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Jony Ive would have done years of work on the design of the Apple Car interior before the project was finally abandoned. While we’ll almost certainly never see those designs, a new electric Ferrari may provide a good clue as to the aesthetic of the interior.
The cockpit of the upcoming Ferrari Luce was designed by Ives’ consultancy Lovefrom, and it likely echoes a number of the elements we could have expected to see in an Apple car …
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It’s previously been suggested that the upcoming M5 Pro and M5 Max MacBook Pro models will allow you to make a more flexible choice of CPU and GPU cores. A recent change to Apple’s website seems to support this theory.
A new report suggests that the change could be even more radical, and that the M5 Pro and M5 Max might be not two distinct chips but rather variants of the same one …
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No news isn’t usually good news when it comes to hardware, and the expectations for the new Apple products coming soon are somewhat underwhelming.
But when it comes to software updates, sometimes less really is more. A new report says that this will be the case with iOS 27, but is that really a possibility – and would it be the right call for Apple … ?
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Yesterday’s Bad Bunny’s Apple Music Super Bowl halftime show – which also featured Lady Gaga and Ricky Martin – set new records, according to the iPhone maker.
Apple also highlighted the ability to watch a replay of the show and listen to the full set list on Apple Music …
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What started life as a humble face monitor geared to watching video and playing games wherever you happen to be has now evolved into something drawing ever closer to a Mac-powered Vision Pro.
The Viture Luma Ultra it isn’t perfect, but it is the closest thing I’ve seen yet to what I’d ideally like from a future Apple Vision Air product …
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Swedish self-assembly furniture giant IKEA has made an additional name for itself through its growing range of budget-priced smart home devices. But if you were thinking of picking up some of its new Matter-over-Thread products, you may want to wait a little while.
There have been a number of frustrated posts from people experiencing connectivity problems with Apple Home and other smart home ecosystems, and IKEA has acknowledged the issues …
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Apple appears to be working hard to ensure it doesn’t repeat Samsung’s mistakes when it launches the iPhone Fold. A new report says the company is considering the use of a new built-in screen protector with exceptional surface hardness and scratch resistance.
It follows an earlier report on another move Apple is said to be making in order to maximize the robustness of the upcoming model …
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Spotify is about to allow premium subscribers in the US and UK to buy physical books through the app, in a move the company expects to drive revenue for both itself and indie bookstores.
It’s an expansion of the company’s partnership with bookshop.org on audiobooks, but it’s hard to see how the move makes any kind of sense …
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Apple reported record-breaking earnings in the final quarter of last year, and CEO Tim Cook highlighted growth in iPhone sales in China as a key reason for this.
This was a dramatic reversal after 18 months of declining sales in the country, and analysts say there are three reasons for this …
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Battery life tests carried out by CNET reveal that the iPhone 17 Pro Max has the best battery life of any of the smartphones tested, and that Apple heads the brand rankings across its models.
Apple’s flagship model took first place, ahead of several models with substantially higher battery capacity, with the base model iPhone 17 in equal second place …
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