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 two technothriller novels , a romcom novel, and an SF novella series.
He is old enough to have owned the original Macintosh. He currently owns an M1 Max 16-inch MacBook Pro, a MacBook Air 11, 12.9-inch iPad Pro (LTE 256GB), iPhone 13 Pro Max (256GB), Dell Ultrawide 49-inch monitor, an Apple Watch (Series 4 WiFi) and multiple HomePods – he suspects it might be cheaper to have a cocaine habit than his addiction to all things anodised aluminum.
He thinks wires are evil and had a custom desk made to hide them, known as the OC Desk for obvious reasons.
He’s known for his op-ed and diary pieces, exploring his experience of Apple products over time, for a more rounded review:
He considers 1000 miles a good distance for a cycle ride and Chernobyl a suitable tourist destination. What can we say, he’s that kind of chap.
He speaks fluent English but only broken American, so please forgive any Anglicised spelling in his posts.
If @benlovejoy-ing him on twitter, please follow him first so that he can DM you if appropriate. If you have information you can pass on, you can also email him. If you would like to comment on one of his pieces, please do so in the comments – he does read them all.
Chipmaker AMD claims that its new laptop chip, the Ryzen 7840U, can outperform Apple’s M2 chip – though it provides no proof of this. The chip is destined to be used in upcoming laptops from Acer, Framework, HP, Lenovo, and Razer.
No benchmarks are provided by AMD to support its claims, and there’s no information on battery life, which is another major strength of Apple’s M-series chips …
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File this one under Today I Learned: You can buy a domain name directly from within the Settings app on your iPhone. Whether it’s for a small business or a personal website, having your own domain offers significant benefits …
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Twitter emergency alerts were one of the casualties of the company starting to charge for the API access that allows automatic tweeting. Many public services and transport companies were facing unaffordable bills to continue to use the service.
Twitter has now announced a partial U-turn on this, though details remain unclear …
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Following last month’s rollout of the new Apple Maps features coming to Austria, Croatia, Czechia, Hungary, Poland, and Slovenia, Apple is now testing them in Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Slovakia.
This is the 19th time Apple has expanded coverage of the all-new mapping, which features both far greater detail and improved navigation …
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It’s almost a decade since I first suggested that we might one day see an Apple Bank. Given that not even Apple Pay existed back then, I’ll be the first to admit that it seemed a pretty out-there idea at the time.
By 2015, it seemed significantly less of a stretch, and yesterday’s billion dollar news brought us even closer …
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While both Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman and display analyst Ross Young originally expected Apple to announce the upcoming 15-inch MacBook Air at a spring event, that’s looking less and less likely now that we’re into May – and WWDC is approaching.
Gurman now expects the new machine to be launched at WWDC, and it would certainly make for a solid keynote headline …
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The Apple vs. Masimo court battle has ended in a mistrial, after six of the jurors found that Apple had not stolen trade secrets to create the O2 sensor in the Apple Watch – but the seventh juror disagreed.
The judge had already rejected half of Masimo’s patent infringement claims before handing the rest of them to the jury to decide …
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While the MacBook Pro‘s now-vintage Touch Bar may have been a misstep, it still seems likely that Apple’s long-term vision is to replace physical keyboards with touchscreen ones – and Carnegie Mellon University’s flat panel haptics could be a better bet than the approaches Apple has patented to date.
Apple’s first step in this lengthy journey was of course the iPhone, replacing the physical keyboards which were the norm on smartphones of the time with a screen-based virtual one …
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That was sounding so good, right up until the end. Luxury audio company Bang & Olufsen’s new portable speaker, the Beosound A5, ticks a lot of boxes – but also costs more than a grand …
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An Apple embezzler who was originally estimated to have cost the Cupertino company $10M has now admitted to fraudulently obtaining a total of $17M over a period of seven years. Dhirendra Prasad worked as a buyer in Apple’s global supply-chain division, and engaged in a mix of activities in order to steal the money.
27th April 2023: Prasad has now been sentenced to three years, and ordered to repay both Apple and the IRS – see update at the end
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Year-on-year shipments in the global smartphone market fell by 13% in the first quarter of this year, according to the latest market intelligence data. This is the fifth consecutive quarter of decline.
Apple was the only major brand to buck the trend, growing its iPhone shipments by 3% while its competitors saw declines ranging from 8% to 22% …
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The latest Apple rumors from Twitter account @analyst941 include iPadOS 17 features geared to larger iPads. They suggest the features are intended for a flagship 14-inch iPad Pro model with an M3 chip.
The same leaker echoes expectations that the USB-C port on iPhone 15 Pro models will support Thunderbolt 3, and says there will be a new display feature geared to using iPhones for video work …
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A number of Apple small business initiatives have helped tiny companies become bigger ones, says the Cupertino company, in the run-up to National Small Business Week.
A number of business have shared how Apple products, apps, and services have helped them grow – and anyone wanting to follow their example can take place in special Today at Apple workshops, Grow Your Business With Apple …
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The European Union has now confirmed that Apple is one of 19 tech giants to be subject to the Digital Services Act. Specifically, the online safety and transparency legislation will apply to the App Store.
Apple has four months to comply, which will likely require changes to App Store recommendations and ads – though it looks like pre-installed iPhone apps won’t be affected …
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TSMC 3nm chip production is well underway, with the latest process expected to be used for both the A17 chip in the iPhone 15 Pro, and the M3 destined for future Macs. However, the company told analysts that it isn’t yet able to keep up with customer demand.
Apple’s chipmaker also said that yield rates (the percentage of chips that pass quality control tests) are not yet good enough to charge the iPhone maker for every wafer produced …
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April is turning into quite a month for new Apple Stores. Last week saw the launch of two new stores in India, and this week sees the opening of another in China: Apple MixC Shenzhen.
This latest addition is a mall store, whose design is virtually identical to the Apple Saket store opened last week – with the Cupertino company seemingly adopting a new standard feature for its retail outlets …
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If you have more than one phone, and want to be able to use your WhatsApp account on both, you’re now in luck: The company has just announced support for multiple smartphones …
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Two organizations key to Apple’s history are to be merged into one, as Xerox’s Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) has been donated to SRI International. This will see PARC and SRI research teams working together on future projects.
PARC was where Steve Jobs famously saw the graphical user interface and mouse that were used in the LISA and then Macintosh, while SRI was where Siri was developed …
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Spotify paid subscriptions grew faster than expected in the first quarter of the year, but the company is still losing money.
The good news for the streaming giant is that paid subscriptions were up 15% to 210M, ahead of analyst expectations and the company’s own guidance …
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Tech giants including Amazon, Google, and Apple face new legal requirements in the UK, under new legislation being introduced today.
While the penalties for breaching the planned law are severe – up to 10% of global turnover – Apple will likely find it relatively easy to comply …
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I know, I know: I’m comparing Humane’s unreleased product with another that hasn’t even been officially confirmed to be in the works. But another way of asking the question is: What, if anything, will ever replace the iPhone?
Apple reportedly believes that it will be some form of augmented reality device, likely the long-rumored Apple Glasses – while two former Apple execs have demonstrated their own vision for a smartphone replacement: a device which has been widely compared to a Star Trek comm badge …
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When the online Apple Store is down, that usually means the company is adding new products – but this time it’s likely just a technical glitch.
The store has twice been replaced today with the message the company displays as it preps new products for sale …
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Just when we thought the Twitter checkmark chaos was at an end, as Musk finally made good on his promise to remove them from legacy verified accounts, more U-turns have been made …
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A report today says that that we can expect to see a new Apple journaling app as part of iOS 17, with the new stock app likely to be shown off at WWDC in June.
As a rather recent convert to journaling, I have to say that the move makes a lot of sense to me …
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