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.
A little under a year ago, Apple promised to invest $600 billion in the U.S. over a four-year period through an American Manufacturing Program (AMP). The company has today announced its largest single AMP commitment to date: a $30 billion Broadcom chip contract.
The iPhone maker says that the deal will help Broadcom expand its Colorado plant, and lead to the production of more than 15 billion US-made chips …
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Apple must continue to carry out age verification of iPhone users in Texas after the Supreme Court denied a request to pause enforcement of the law.
The iPhone maker strongly opposed the law, with Tim Cook going as far as to personally lobby state Governor Greg Abbott …
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We’ve been looking out for new features in iOS 27 beta 3, and we’ve now found an additional one: the latest developer beta allows Siri AI to access information from third-party apps.
The only examples seen so far are pulling in the remaining battery from electric car apps, but it’s likely that other capabilities will be found …
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“Father of the iPod” Tony Fadell has written a lengthy column in which he argues that our choice of AI assistant really matters, but also raises some huge questions that need to be addressed.
He says the reason the iPhone has stood the test of time is because Apple understood the behavioral shifts it would create, not just the technology shift, and the same will be true of AI assistants …
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A leaker with a decent track record has backed earlier reports of two improvements said to be coming to the iPhone Air 2 next year.
They’ve provided very specific information on one of the changes, lending additional credibility to earlier claims …
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The next generation of Apple radio chips is expected to debut in the iPhone 18 Pro and iPhone Ultra, but a new deal suggests the company doesn’t expect to complete a switch to its own cellular modems before 2031.
The company has committed to retaining and expanding its partnership with radio chip maker Broadcom through 2031 …
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Last month, the beta version of the WhatsApp Android app started showing a green dot for contacts who are online. The beta of the iPhone app is now doing the same.
The feature does seem to take care to protect privacy in a couple of ways, which is not always a given with Meta apps …
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One of the big challenges for parents these days is that you may want to give your kids access to a phone for emergencies or tracking before you are willing to give them access to the internet, social media apps, and so on. There’s also a growing trend of people buying dumb phones in order to reduce their own phone addiction, like the Nokia shown above.
Apple is giving parental controls a major upgrade in iOS 27, but there’s a little-known way to turn an iPhone into a dumb phone without waiting for this …
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After conflicting reports about when the iPhone Ultra would launch, there’s now a clear consensus that it will be announced in September alongside the iPhone 18 Pro.
It does, however, look likely that Apple may adapt the iPhone X strategy of announcing it in September and having it go on sale a little later, and a report yesterday suggested that launch availability may be very limited …
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Me being me, one of the first things I wanted to do in my new home was set up the smart home technology. That’s now almost complete (I’m currently engaged in mortal battle with presence detectors) and I’ll have an update soon.
But there was also the matter of the smart home tech I was leaving behind – and that was less straightforward thanks to a surprising omission in the Apple Home ecosystem …
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We’ve been hearing for a long time now that a new high-end MacBook Ultra model with a touchscreen will get a significant redesign with a slimmer form factor. The new design appeared to be one of the things that would differentiate the high-end model from the MacBook Pro.
However, a report yesterday said that an entry-level MacBook Pro set for release early next year will have a new design in line with that of the Ultra …
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A large-scale survey has shown that most Americans would support a ban social media use by children under the age of 16.
The biggest supporters of the proposal were parents with kids under 18 years old, where almost two-thirds were in favor …
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The iPhone Photography Awards competition has been running now for 19 years, and the 2026 winners have just been announced.
In addition to four overall winners, there are first place awards in a wide range of categories, including abstract, animals, architecture, children, cityscape, landscape, lifestyle, nature, and people …
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A privacy flaw in Apple’s Hide My Email feature means that your real email address can be discovered. A security researcher said that tests found 100% of generated addresses allowed an attacker to reveal the real email associated with the Apple account.
Tyler Murphy said that he discovered and reported the issue to Apple more than a year ago, but it still hasn’t been fixed, and he has now made the decision to go public …
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The launch of the iPhone was one factor contributing to a historically low birth rate in the United States, according to a new scientific study.
Specifically, the study claims that the iPhone “played a sizeable role” in a decline in unintended pregnancies …
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The first report of a major new Apple Watch design dates back to 2023, so you probably shouldn’t hold your breath on the basis of the latest claim. The original Bloomberg report said that an Apple Watch X would arrive in 2024 or 2025, so …
Leaker Instant Digital doesn’t appear to have any new information about an upcoming redesign, but rather refers back to that original report and says it is finally arriving this year. But they do echo the claim that it will break compatibility with existing bands …
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People commonly disclose all kinds of personal data to AI chatbots, including the highly inadvisable practice of asking them for health advice. In addition to the grave medical dangers of obtaining inaccurate advice, users are also running significant privacy risks.
Most AI chatbots have terms and conditions that allow any of your conversations with them to be used as training data, and often app terms that allow data to be collated and sold. Democrats now propose to update a privacy law to prevent the sale of health data …
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Netflix has been trying to clamp down on password sharing for years now, and it has just added an additional barrier in the form of a new requirement for each profile to have a unique email address.
In other streaming news, Amazon is being sued for forcing Prime Video members to watch ads without reducing the subscription fee to compensate them …
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Three AirDrop vulnerabilities have been discovered by security researchers, affecting both iPhone and Mac, with similar ones found in Android’s Quick Share.
An attacker could easily exploit the vulnerabilities to cause AirDrop, AirPlay, Handoff, Universal Clipboard, and Continuity Camera to crash and remain unavailable for as long as the attack continues …
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Britain’s antitrust regulator has proposed forcing Apple to allow developers to link to third-party payment options to purchase apps and subscriptions outside of the App Store.
The proposal would specifically ban Apple from using the same forms of “malicious compliance” it has tried in both the US and EU …
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Some of the recent Apple price hikes exceeded 50%, while the cost of upgrading memory and storage has literally doubled in some cases.
The company has said that it’s “working tirelessly to find solutions” to the problem, but when might we expect prices to revert – if ever … ?
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If you’re a long-time T-Mobile subscriber on a plan you took out years ago, the company may have some bad news for you. The carrier is closing what it says are more than 1,100 different legacy “plan codes” and moving subscribers onto new ones, with price increases or reductions in usage limits likely …
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A maxed out MacBook Pro has never been cheap given Apple’s pricing on both RAM and SSD upgrades, but the recent price hikes mean that the 16-inch model now tops out at a five-figure sum.
John Gruber ran the numbers and noted that while the base model prices only went up by around 14%, there were massive increases to both RAM and storage options …
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We learned yesterday that Apple is trying to persuade the Trump administration to allow it to buy memory chips from two Chinese companies blacklisted by the Pentagon, CXMT and YMTC.
Apple previously sought permission from the Biden administration to do the same thing back in 2022, and that did not go well – despite promising to use the chips only for iPhones sold in China …
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