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.
Bloomberg carries a piece noting the astonishing gains made by Apple stockholders during the time when Tim Cook was CEO. The cumulative gain was 2,275% – or a total return of 2,736% when accounting for dividend payments also.
The site suggests this will make him a tough act to follow, but my own view is that new CEO John Ternus doesn’t have to emulate Cook’s management of the company …
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Apple yesterday presented what it said was “shocking evidence” based on analysis of a MacBook owned by Chang Liu, a former employee who moved to OpenAI. The company is alleging that two of its former employees stole trade secrets relating to hardware design and more.
The AI company hit back with its own legal filing, saying that the whole situation is “a mess of Apple’s own making” …
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Both Apple pundits and most of the internet seem to agree that Vision Pro is the best way to watch baseball, following the immersive experience offered by Apple’s Friday Night Baseball.
Notably, there also seemed to be a consensus view that less is more when it comes to the various immersive camera angles …
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The latest development in the trade war Trump started with Canada is an executive order to rename Lake Ontario as Lake America. Google Maps has updated the name, though what you see depends on which country you are in, with only US users seeing Lake America. Apple Maps has so far stuck to the real name …
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Apple surprised many when it quietly announced updated Mac mini and Mac Studio models shortly before its September event. We would normally have expected these announcements to be part of that event.
One strong theory is that the company may be making a lot of big announcements in its ‘Surprise and shine‘ keynote, and therefore wanted to get these updates out of the way beforehand. But a new report presents another theory …
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A report yesterday suggested that Apple considered making a special version of the Apple Pencil for the upcoming iPhone Ultra before deciding against it.
Bloomberg suggests that there are three reasons behind this decision, one of them being a desire not to conflict with the position adopted by Steve Jobs when launching the original iPhone. However, this was almost certainly not the deciding factor …
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I recently observed that Apple appeared to have abandoned Cinematic mode, and a video experiment perfectly illustrates my frustration at this fact.
That’s not because the feature is bad, but rather that it comes so close to being good enough for real-life use that it’s hard to see why Apple hasn’t taken advantage of the massive increases in power between the iPhone 13 on which it launched and the latest iPhones. Let me show you what I mean …
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Apple has announced what it describes as the sneakiest crossover of the summer in the form of Sneaky Sasquatch joining forces with Subway Surfers+ in Apple Arcade – together with a collection of stickers for the Messages app …
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Apple has announced an expansion of its Supplier Employee Development Fund, a $50 million educational program for workers in its supply chain, in the form of a new Apple Education Center in Vietnam.
The country is becoming an increasingly important manufacturing center as Apple diversifies beyond China, and the center operates in partnership with Hanoi University of Science and Technology (HUST) …
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Meta has reached a settlement with US states in an $18B lawsuit accusing the social media giant of deliberately making Instagram addictive to teenagers. The money will be used to fund youth safety initiatives and more, though there is a catch.
More importantly, the company has agreed to introduce unprecedented protections against overuse of its social media apps by teens …
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For a time, it was unclear whether the flip or fold form factor was the future of folding smartphones, but for now at least, it seems clear that the book-style fold is the winner.
It’s what we saw from Samsung’s 8th-generation folding phone, it’s what we’re expecting from the iPhone Ultra, and leaked images of Xiaomi’s 18 Fold also follow the trend …
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When we ran a poll last month, the overwhelming majority of 9to5Mac readers agreed that Apple should exit the ad business.
Ads have now landed in Apple Maps in the US and Canada, and my view is that they are every bit as bad as expected …
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Instagram now has a new iPhone-exclusive feature that can create reels automatically. You just select your video clips and it creates an edit with a single tap.
However, Meta is being extremely careful not to upset creators by implying that the app can replace their manual editing skills …
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Sometimes a headline is the complete inverse of the real news in the story, and that’s the case with a new survey measuring interest in the upcoming iPhone Ultra. The headline says 75% of US adults aren’t interested in a folding iPhone, while the real surprise is that as many as 25% are.
Apple shouldn’t get too excited by the results, however, as willingness to pay was way, way less than the price we’re expecting the company to announce …
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There was a pleasant surprise in yesterday’s announcement of the Mac Studio with M5 Max chip: the starting price is unchanged from that of the M4 Max Mac Studio, at $2,499.
However, if you want to upgrade the GPU, there is a gotcha in the cost of doing so – it will cost you $300 more than Apple’s website initially indicates …
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Apple hit its 50th birthday this year, and many of its customers are even older. The company has created a new support page outlining 50 ways to make its devices easier to use, mostly using accessibility settings.
These range from changing the size of text on an Apple Watch to having your iPhone alert you when your washing machine cycle is complete …
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OpenAI CEO Sam Altman says that AI is still awaiting its iPhone moment, and that he needs to learn a key lesson from Apple.
He also admits that he was overly ambitious in his idea of how quickly AI would disrupt the economy, but thinks that, paradoxically, the tech will create new opportunities for businesses that don’t use it …
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Years ago, MacBooks incorporated a slot for using a cable lock to secure the device to a table leg or similar. They were most useful in coffee shops when you wanted to return to the counter to order another drink without having to carry your laptop with you.
Those slots are long gone, but you can now buy adapters to secure your MacBook Neo, MacBook Air or MacBook Pro …
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Apple implemented a Siri AI waitlist for beta users of its upcoming operating systems, and it appears the same will be true when iOS 27 and macOS 27 officially launch next month.
This means that you won’t have immediate access to the new Siri AI features when your devices update to their new OS …
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There’s an old photography saying that the best camera is the one you have on you at the time. The iPhone is of course the camera that most of us have on us most of the time, and that’s obviously a massive benefit for things like shots of kids, social events, and so on. But a current video project highlighted another advantage.
I really enjoy walking through London in the early evening, and I’ll quite often shoot photos and short video clips on my iPhone. Initially, I did so purely for the pleasure of it, but I later realized the potential for short clips to serve as B-roll in video projects …
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Roblox claimed to have made changes to its hugely popular children’s app to protect them from predators, but a regulatory authority says these protections are inadequate.
It found four major failings, including adults being able to send connection requests to children without parental approval …
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During the height of Trump’s trade war with China, where tariff increases were announced on an almost weekly basis, companies like Logitech responded by significantly increasing the prices of their products in the US.
Earlier this year, the US Supreme Court ruled that these tariffs were illegal and must be returned to manufacturers. However, there’s been no sign of companies passing on the refunds to customers, and a class action lawsuit is now seeking to correct this …
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Apple’s long-running antitrust battle with the European Union over the sale of iPhone apps appears to finally be over.
The EU has said that it welcomes the new app commission rates the company is offering within the bloc. The revised terms will see developers pay a commission or fee ranging from 5% to 26%, depending on their turnover and chosen sale channels …
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ClarityCheck, a facial-identification tool for which it’s hard to think of many legitimate uses, reportedly left millions of face photos publicly exposed on the internet in a major privacy breach.
It’s likely that the vast majority of victims had no idea their photos had been uploaded to the site, and had never granted consent …
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