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.
Publicly available information reveals that Apple was fined a total of $851 million last year for privacy and antitrust violations, down from $2.1B in 2024.
The data was collated by Proton, which reports that it would have taken the iPhone maker just three days, three hours and 28 minutes to pay off the total …
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It’s been a long time coming, but the AirTag 2 finally launched this week with improved Precision Finding, a longer Bluetooth range, and a louder speaker. It’s otherwise almost exactly the same as its predecessor, but one more difference has been found, and you may want to take note …
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At least 37 attorneys general for US states are responding to the ongoing problem of the Grok chatbot creating child sexual abuse materials (CSAM).
It follows the app being banned in two countries and investigations being opened in both the UK and EU, but both Apple and Google have so far ignored requests for them to temporarily remove Grok and X from their respective app stores …
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A leaker better known for posting about Android smartphones has made a claim potentially pointing to improved telephoto performance in the iPhone 18 lineup.
The combination of the vagueness of the report and the rather unlikely nature of it means there’s probably nothing to the claim, but we note it just in case there is some element of truth behind it …
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We’re expecting the iPhone Fold to be eye-wateringly expensive, with predicted pricing as high as $2,500. However, it won’t be the most expensive smartphone on the market thanks to Samsung launching its new trifold phone at a price which gives little change from $3k …
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Meta has revealed that it plans to test paid subscriptions to Instagram, WhatsApp, and Facebook – with multiple options apparently on the cards.
The company has so far only provided specifics on the paywalled features for Instagram, with no details yet available about its other services …
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If you’re seeing a lot of photos of stacks of Mac mini machines filling the internet, that’s been sparked by the development of Clawdbot by Peter Steinberger. It’s an open-source project that allows you to run your own personal AI assistant, and multiple M4 Mac minis seem to be the hardware of choice.
It’s the very definition of a nerdy project, and the memes doing the rounds very much reflect this – though it seems not everybody is amused …
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Apple yesterday announced the AirTag 2, the first update to its standalone location-tracking device. It offers improved Precision Finding, a longer Bluetooth range, and a louder speaker.
Whether or not the improvements justify replacing any of your existing AirTags is a judgment call, but there’s a mix of good news and bad if you are considering it …
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Two laptops with the latest Intel chips have beaten out the MacBook Pro with M5 chip – but it’s already clear that this will be an extremely short-lived victory.
Benchmark results show impressive multi-core scores for the new Intel Core Ultra Series 3 in laptops from MSI and Lenovo …
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A database containing 149 million account logins has been found sitting unsecured on a cloud service. The records include 900,000 usernames and passwords for Apple accounts.
It was discovered by the same security researcher who found a similar database of 184 million records last year …
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Confirmation that Microsoft handed over BitLocker keys to the FBI for three Windows laptops is being contrasted with Apple standing up to the same agency back in 2015.
However, the comparison isn’t actually fair, and there is a simple way for Windows users to ensure their encrypted data remains secure …
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AI hardware has been in the news this week, with the Apple pin report getting most of the headlines. But there was also a new claim about OpenAI’s upcoming AI hardware device under iO branding.
It’s more than eight months since former Apple design chief Jony Ive and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman teased it, and we’re still no closer to knowing its form factor. The latest report doesn’t exactly help, appearing to contradict what the pair have already said …
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A report yesterday said that we will see a Siri chatbot as part of iOS 27, despite the company previously dismissing this idea.
If accurate, this will see the company adopt a two-stage strategy to finally giving the new Siri the smarts it has long lacked …
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Yesterday brought a surprising report about the development of an Apple pin, which The Information likened to the mysterious and as-yet-unreleased AI hardware device designed by Jony Ive.
I have a pretty strong suspicion about what the Apple pin is, and I’m very confident indeed that I know what it isn’t …
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OpenAI says it is now rolling out ChatGPT age prediction and that it will use this to determine the content you are allowed to see. It’s not immediately clear how this will impact Siri fallback to ChatGPT.
The AI company says that it will use a wide range of signals to guess your age, including your usage patterns over time …
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Even traditional video-on-demand services are no longer safe, it seems: Netflix vertical video is coming later this year.
The company started testing the idea more than six months ago, and one of its co-CEOs has now confirmed that the move is going ahead …
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There’s been considerable confusion about the fate of the iPhone 18 Pro Dynamic Island, with conflicting claims about the position of the selfie camera, the visibility of the Face ID components, and the size and location of the Dynamic Island.
One recent report seemed to leave open the possibility that the upcoming device wouldn’t even need a Dynamic Island, but a reliable source has now stepped in to clarify the position …
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A Californian court has awarded Apple a partial victory in a class action lawsuit alleging that the company violated the privacy of some iPhone owners.
The case followed a security researcher discovering data collection practices by Apple which he described at the time as “shocking” …
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Leaker Fixed Focus Digital gained credibility for being one of the first to report the iPhone 16e naming, and continues to insist that an iPhone Air 2 will launch this year despite contradictory reports.
In a new Weibo post today, they double down on a claim made last month and add a little more detail …
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Late last year, a Reddit post caused something of a furore. A user posted a photo of their Cosmic Orange iPhone 17 Pro that had turned pink. A few other examples followed.
However, while you should continue to follow Apple’s advice on how to avoid this, tests have shown it’s unlikely to happen accidentally …
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Amazon has long offered the ability to sync ebooks with their audiobook equivalent, a convenient option for those who prefer to read when sitting down but like to continue with the book while on the move. Spotify is currently testing a feature called Page Match, which can pull off the same trick with paper books …
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Apple’s Mac icons in Tahoe have come under fire from quite a few people. Adjectives that have been applied to them include terrible, awful, amateurish, dumbed down, and objectively bad.
With the announcement of Apple Creator Studio, the company has gone even further in terms of minimal icons for its creative apps, provoking further controversy …
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In an annual tradition, Apple is celebrating Martin Luther King Jr Day on its homepage, with quotes from the civil rights champion.
This year’s featured quote is “Life’s most persistent and urgent question is, ‘What are you doing for others?’” …
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One of the biggest visual changes we’re expecting with this year’s iPhone 18 Pro is a punch-hole selfie camera, with the Face ID module invisibly embedded into the display.
Until recently, we’d been expecting this to be centered in the same way as the current camera and Face ID module. However, one report has suggested that the punch-hole selfie camera would instead be relocated to the top-left corner, where the clock currently lives. If so, logically the Dynamic Island would move with it, and this is shown in a new video render …
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