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’s long-term goal for Vision Pro is believed to be an Apple Glasses product, in which an ordinary-looking pair of glasses will be able to display both text and AR content.
We’ve seen some competitors take early steps in that direction, and the RayNeo X3 Pro AR glasses look like the closest thing we’ve yet seen in a real-world product …
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Around fifty Apple employees have been fired for allegedly defrauding the company via its Matching Grants program, in which the company agrees to match charitable donations made by employees.
So far, six of the former Bay Area employees have also been charged with tax fraud relating to fake donations …
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Depending on the model, an Apple Silicon MacBook Pro officially supports between one and three external displays, but a software workaround lets you boost that number.
The new Plugable UD-7400PD dock takes advantage of that fact to provide a very neat way to allow even an M1 MacBook Pro to simultaneously drive up to five external monitors …
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The iPhone 16 is still banned from sale in Indonesia, despite Apple promising to invest a billion dollars in the country’s economy.
Apple had initially had offers of first $10M and then $100M rejected by the Indonesian government, before offering a cool billion dollars’ worth of manufacturing – which is exactly what the country demanded …
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There are plenty of third-party apps that will create automated lighting scenes with Philips Hue products, but a report that the company will be launching this feature in the official app has today been confirmed.
Users will be able to request AI-generated scenes using either voice or text, with the company citing the example “Give me a scene for a garden party” …
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Writing at Six Colors, veteran tech writer Jason Snell thinks Apple’s plan to address the Apple Intelligence summaries mess doesn’t go far enough, and has three suggestions for the company.
The post follows a series of embarrassing mistakes in attempted summaries of news stories, which have variously claimed that Luigi Mangione shot himself, announced the winner of a competition which hadn’t even taken place, and reported the non-existent coming out of a tennis player …
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While some parents treat their kids to an Apple Watch, the Pinwheel Watch aims to offer an interesting alternative. The $160 cellular smartwatch combines strong parental controls with a kid-friendly AI chatbot.
Unlike the real thing, the Pinwheel includes a camera, with the company promising that video calling will be coming later this year …
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We already knew that Apple’s fiscal Q4 (calendar Q3) quarter set a new revenue record, but were lacking some details. A new report says that the income reflected record iPhone shipments, and the highest ever average selling price (ASP) achieved for the iPhone line-up.
Counterpoint Research shared the data from its latest Market Monitor report …
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Dell was mocked at its own press launch for copying Apple’s iPhone naming convention for its PCs. Both laptop and desktop PCs are now divided into three tiers, whose names are taken straight from the iPhone line-up: Dell, Dell Pro, and Dell Pro Max.
Despite claiming it did this purely for simplicity, and not to copy Apple, Dell actually managed to make its PC line-up even less comprehensible than before …
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Smart home company Aqara has announced no fewer than nine new products at this year’s consumer electronics show. Most, however, won’t be available in the US until later in the year.
These include a large touch-screen panel which performs multiple duties as a smart light switch, a controller and display for other smart home devices, a Zigbee hub, and a Matter bridge for Aqara Zigbee devices …
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We may still be mostly waiting for a smarter Siri, but OpenAI CEO Sam Altman thinks the company already knows how to create the holy grail of AI: artificial general intelligence (AGI).
AGI is the term given to an AI system which can match or exceed human cognitive capabilities across a wide range of fields – in other words, AI which is at least as smart as we are …
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We may be just a few days into 2025, but Apple thinks it can already tell which upcoming music artists are set to make a breakthrough this year. The company shared its predictions as the Shazam Fast Forward 2025.
Apple looked at the trending artists in the first five days of music Shazammed by users, and had its own music editors review them …
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Ensuring HomeKit compatibility for smart home products is now very much easier to achieve. Apple has agreed to accept Matter certification for all new devices, without requiring additional testing before granting the Works With Apple Home badge.
Although it was always the goal that Matter support meant automatic compatibility with HomeKit, Google Home, Alexa, and Samsung Smart Things, there was previously a difference between theory and practice …
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Lutron has earned a reputation for high-quality HomeKit-compatible window blinds, but with a very hefty price tag. The cost is something the company is seeking to address with the new Caséta Smart Shade.
Lutron says that you can expect the quality and performance it is known for, but at a more affordable price tag of $399 for most window sizes …
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Making iPhones in India is a key element of Apple’s efforts to reduce its manufacturing dependence on China, and a new report indicates that the company may be able to cut the cost of doing so.
The Indian government is reportedly planning to offer at least $2.7B in support for local manufacturing, which could reduce iPhone production expenses in the country …
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A pair of reports suggest we can expect to see three changes to the materials Apple uses in the casing of at least some iPhone 17 models.
The latest of these concerns the way that the sides of the phone blend in with the rear casing, with a smoother transition promised …
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iPhone sales in China fell for the fourth successive month, amidst a sharp decline across all non-Chinese brands.
Official data revealed that shipments of foreign-branded smartphones were down 47% year-on-year, explaining Apple’s rare decision to discount the cost of current iPhone models in the country …
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The right to net neutrality has again been lost after a federal court ruled that the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) did not have the power to ban a two-tier internet. The FCC had acted in response to calls from Apple and more than 40 other tech companies to safeguard equal treatment for all.
This means that internet service providers (ISPs) and mobile carriers will again be free to accept payments from large websites and services to prioritize their traffic over the rest of the internet …
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The Chinese government forced Apple to remove VPN apps from the App Store there way back in 2017, and the company is now having to do the same in India.
So far, a small number of VPN apps have been removed to comply with an anti-privacy law barring anonymous use, but many more are likely to follow …
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Telegram verification is already available for public figures and bodies, but it’s now rolling out a new system where accounts can be verified by third-party organizations …
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Phishing attacks are about to get a whole lot more convincing. A new report warns that scammers are now using AI to scrape information about you from your online profiles in order to send hyper-personalized emails which target your login credentials.
By finding out everything from your employer to your interests, scammers can send emails which have a far greater chance of appearing to be genuine …
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Many start the new year full of good intentions on the exercise front, and Apple is offering some encouragement through a homepage promotion of a free three-month trial of Apple Fitness+.
The offer itself isn’t new – it’s been available with the purchase of a new device since 2022 – but the homepage promo is clearly intended to tap into new year resolutions …
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A leaker with a mixed track record has claimed that this year’s iPhone SE will be getting an upgraded name to reflect its new design: the iPhone 16E.
We are expecting the budget model to get its biggest ever upgrade this year, finally dropping the large chin with Home button for a modern form factor based on the iPhone 14 …
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I’ve been arguing that passwords are horrible for the best part of a decade now, and was an enthusiastic early adopter of the far better approach of passkeys.
Passkeys were supposed to achieve the holy grail of an approach which is both more secure than passwords and so easy to use that everyone would adopt them. But a new piece outlines four problems with the technology …
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