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.
It was back in September when Meta first revealed an early prototype of its Orion AR glasses, and while they are a long way from becoming an actual product you can buy, the company does believe it can achieve this.
Indeed, Meta’s wearables chief thinks that Orion can in time become the AirPods of augmented reality devices …
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One of the biggest problems with social media is that our feeds are full of things the algorithms think we want to see, rather than what we actually want to see.
If your Instagram recommendations seem increasingly removed from your interests, Meta is now offering you the chance to start again from scratch …
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Apple has put together no fewer than nine different Top 10 lists, revealing the most popular podcasts of 2024.
The lists kick off with the top shows of the year, but go on to list the most popular in a number of different categories, from new shows to those with the highest subscriber counts …
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The latest iPhone 17 Air report suggests that the expected ultra-slim model could be as thin as 6mm, which would make it the slimmest iPhone ever made.
While that would be a challenging metric to hit, and we’ll believe it when there’s supporting evidence, we do seem to have growing clarity on the market Apple is targeting with the device …
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Apple has been one of the most vocal supporters of the benefits of regularly standing up during the working day.
The company encourages standing once an hour via Apple Watch alerts, and it also made sit-stand desks a standard fitment in its Apple Park campus. CEO Tim Cook even cited the “sitting is the new cancer” phrase which has proven so controversial …
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Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman has resurrected the idea of an Apple television, albeit couching this in the most uncertain of terms.
[The company] may even revisit the idea of making an Apple-branded TV set, something it’s evaluating.
Long-time readers may recall that rumors about this date back to at least 2011 …
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A new report today suggests that porch pirates – thieves who steal packages left on doorsteps shortly after delivery – have accessed tracking data from AT&T systems to follow iPhone deliveries.
There has been a marked uptick in iPhones being stolen from doorsteps after being ordered from AT&T and delivered by Fedex, apparently with the help of real-time delivery updates …
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Apple last week launched Final Cut Pro 11, and the company clearly consider the new features offered to be a big deal. The last time Apple did a full version number change was the launch of Final Cut Pro X (aka FCP 10) way back in 2011.
Final Cut Pro 11 includes eight new features, and the AI-driven automatic caption feature was one of the headline ones …
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Reuters found discriminatory job ads for iPhone workers in India, with recruitment leaflets stating that women applying for positions with Foxconn must be unmarried and aged 18 to 32.
The offending ads have been withdrawn following the launch of state and federal investigations into Foxconn’s hiring practices by the Indian government, but neither Foxconn nor Apple has yet offered any explanation for the original requirements …
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I know, it’s just a developer beta, and if anyone from Apple asks then my Visual Intelligence first impressions are purely offered in the context of its future potential. But I have to say that trying it leaves me excited for that future.
The actual Apple Intelligence part is currently relatively limited. In most cases, you get a choice between asking ChatGPT to describe to you what you are seeing and a Google search …
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I’m fairly firmly convinced that people who don’t keep their iPhone in a case are from an entirely different species to me. While I don’t make a habit of dropping mine, I don’t think there has been a year in which I haven’t dropped or knocked it against something at least once.
For me, then, an iPhone case falls into the category of a necessity rather than a luxury – but that doesn’t mean I don’t appreciate a luxurious look and feel …
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M4 MacBook Pro reviews mostly endorsed my own view that, while the machine would make a great purchase for Intel MBP owners, there isn’t a compelling reason for any M-series user to upgrade.
However, it turns out that Apple quietly gave the latest MacBook Pro a new display tech, offering two benefits …
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Back in 2020, Apple admitted that some AirPods Pro units suffered from both crackling sounds, and faults in the Active Noise Cancellation feature. The company launched a recall program which allowed customers to return their AirPods and have them replaced.
Apple said that only models made before October 2020 were affected, but a new AirPods Pro lawsuit claims this isn’t true – and says the company’s own actions confirm this …
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Some six years after virtual private network company NordVPN started searching data breaches for the most-used passwords, things are every bit as bad as when the company started.
Each year, the company searches the dark web for passwords stolen by malware or exposed in security breaches to determine the most commonly-used passwords, and this year’s crop is as depressing as ever …
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Snapchat is rolling out a new feature which will work in a similar way to Apple’s Find My app, but will be limited to family members.
Parents will be able to request the location of the teens, and vice-versa, with some automated location reporting also available …
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TSMC’s Arizona plants will enable Apple chips for older devices to be made in the US for the first time, but things haven’t exactly been going to plan.
The latest development is that a group of the company’s US workers have filed a lawsuit accusing the Taiwanese company of ‘anti-American discrimination’ …
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Earlier this week Ming-Chi Kuo suggested that we’ll see an Apple smart home camera in 2026, with the company confident it will prove to be a popular accessory, selling in the tens of millions per year.
Given Apple’s habit of minimizing the number of products it makes, if the report is accurate the company must feel there’s good reason to enter a crowded product category, and I think an Apple camera will likely differentiate itself in two ways: privacy, and Apple Intelligence …
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Shazam was once so ubiquitous that it was a verb, but since Apple’s acquisition and rebranding of the feature as Music Recognition, you don’t even need to have the Shazam app installed any more.
Apple has continued to improve the feature, and as of the iOS 18.2 beta, it can now tell you where you were when you heard a song …
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Apple first launched its Health Records feature way back in 2018, to provide a unified view of our own health records.
Recent complications following surgery really showed how valuable this could be if universally adopted, not just for us as patients, but also to assist healthcare providers in delivering the best standard of care …
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A Bloomberg report yesterday suggested that Apple is working on a wall-mounted smart display panel to act as “a command center for the home” – and that it could launch as early as March of next year.
I effectively trialled this concept back in 2019, wall-mounting an old iPad Air to serve as a dedicated smart home control panel, and reactions to that were enough to convince me that the upcoming new product is likely to be a winner …
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The new M4 MacBook Pro is a beast, offering a phenomenal combination of performance and battery-life, with the bonus of a Center Stage camera and the option of a nano-texture display.
But I have to say that I’m not remotely tempted because, honestly, my 2021 M1 Max MacBook Pro still feels to me like a brand-new machine – and that phenomenon could be an issue for Apple going forward …
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Apple CEO Tim Cook has announced that the company will be making a donation to assist with relief efforts after deadly flash floods in Valencia, Spain.
At least 95 people are known to have been killed so far, and that number is likely to rise as an unknown number of people remain unaccounted for …
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While we were very confident beforehand that we wouldn’t be seeing a larger iMac this week, there are still plenty of people waiting impatiently for at least a new 27-inch iMac. Many are hoping for 30-inch, 32-inch, or even bigger.
But while I do still think that’s in the works, the launch of the M4 Mac mini relieves a lot of the time pressure, for a couple of reasons …
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A report from Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman suggests that Apple’s upcoming smart home display might bear more than a passing resemblance to one of the most iconic Macintosh models, the iMac G4.
This is something I suggested might happen back in the summer, though personally I was hoping for a magnetic attachment for an iPad …
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