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.
There’s good news if you didn’t place a pre-order but have now decided to buy one of the latest iPads. Both the new iPad Air and iPad Pro are available for immediate store pickup today in each of the locations we checked.
Reasonably prompt delivery is also available, ranging from same-day in some locations to 2-5 days in others …
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Apple is continuing its PR offensive to promote the official App Store as the safest place to buy iPhone apps, after antitrust cases forced it to open up its platform to competition. It said that it has blocked more than $7B’s worth of attempted App Store fraud.
The company says that the “potentially fraudulent transactions” were detected and blocked over a four-year period from 2020 to 2023 …
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When I tried Ray-Ban Meta glasses last week, I described the AI features as largely a gimmick at this point, but still making me feel excited for a future Apple Glasses product.
Several commenters noted that the glasses do somewhat better when given follow-up questions, and I tried out this feature on another walk, to reveal a mix of hits and misses. But what’s really missing at present is integration …
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MacPaw’s Setapp Mobile launches as an invitation-only beta in the EU today, offering European iPhone owners a far easier way to get access to multiple apps for a single monthly subscription than the clunky US experience.
Even better, for the lucky ones given access to the early beta, it’s free for now …
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The White House has announced steep increases in a number of Chinese import tariffs, raising the prospect of another trade war between the two countries.
The last time this happened, China directly threatened to use Apple as a bargaining chip in response to new tariffs imposed by the previous administration …
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The OLED screen is the headline feature of the shiny new iPad Pro, but it seems that a little more software tweaking may be needed. Testing by one reviewer found that the device struggles to display certain shades of blue.
Specifically, HDR highlights are blown out, appearing almost white, in a problem the report says is replicable on the 13-inch iPad Pro …
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If you haven’t yet watched yesterday’s OpenAI event, I highly recommend doing so. The headline news was that the latest GPT-4o model works seamlessly with any combination of text, audio, and video.
That includes the ability to ‘show’ the GPT-4o app a screen recording you are taking of another app – and it’s this capability the company showed off with a pretty incredible iPad AI tutor demo …
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After Apple was required to make big changes in Europe to comply with the EU’s Digital Markets Act (DMA), Microsoft and Booking.com have also been ruled to be subject to the antitrust law …
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The US judge who ordered Apple to allow developers to sell apps outside of the official App Store has sharply criticized the way the iPhone maker has responded.
Epic Games went back to court to claim that Apple was not properly complying with the antitrust order, and remarks made by judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers indicate that she is in agreement …
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We learned earlier this month that Apple was actively discussing a success-based bonus system for Apple TV+ talent – in which writers, actors, and directors would be paid less up-front, but receive greater rewards when shows proved popular with audiences.
A new report reveals some of the specifics of this, including the three criteria Apple would apply to determine who receives the bonus payments of up to $10.5M per season …
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Update: Meta is beginning its promised AI rollout to more countries, with the glasses getting AI capabilities in Brazil, Bolivia, Guatemala, Paraguay, Philippines and the UK. More countries will follow in the coming weeks.
I feel like current glasses tech is giving us partial peeks into an Apple Glasses future. Viture One XR glasses provide one potential take, and the Ray-Ban Meta glasses another – and perhaps suggesting the future may be closer than I thought …
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While an expensive, bulky Vision Pro headset undoubtedly has its place for some, Apple’s longer-term goal is believed to be a product dubbed Apple Glasses: bringing AR capabilities into something with a similar form-factor and weight to conventional eyeglasses or sunglasses.
Squeezing that much tech into a much smaller device is, of course, a huge challenge – but researchers at Stanford’s Computational Imaging Lab may have come up with at least part of the solution …
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We learned late last year that a Microsoft iOS app store was in the works, and the company has now announced that this will launch in July.
Initially, it will be limited to Microsoft’s own games, but will later open up to other iPhone game developers, giving them an alternative outlet to Apple’s official App Store …
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There’s been much debate on whether playing video games has a positive or negative impact on kids – and now teen gamers themselves have weighed-in.
A new large-scale survey of US teens found that around 40% of them played every day – with smartphones almost as popular a gaming device as consoles – and reported a mixed impact on their life …
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Version 2.7 of the t:connect iOS app – which is used to control delivery of insulin by the t:slim X2 pump – has been urgently recalled by the FDA.
The FDA issued a Class I recall, which is reserved for products likely to cause “serious adverse health consequences or death” …
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A new streaming video bundle has been announced, comprising Disney+, Hulu, Max. It will be available in two tiers, starting sometime this summer.
Given the that it will include ABC, CNN, DC, Discovery, Disney, Food Network, FX, HBO, HGTV, Hulu, Marvel, Pixar, Searchlight, Warner Bros, and more, it raises the question of whether the big networks are simply reinventing cable TV …
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Hollywood names have criticized Apple’s new iPad Pro ad, as it depicts the crushing of musical instruments, paints, camera lenses, books, movie characters, sculptures, and more.
Actor Hugh Grant was one of those speaking up against the ad, tweeting that what it showed was “the destruction of the human experience, courtesy of Silicon Valley” …
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You might expect the introduction of the first OLED screens and uber-thin form factor to result in strong iPad Pro demand, but a new forecast from market intelligence company TrendForce suggests it may actually be lower than last year.
The company predicts that total shipments of the latest iPad Pro models “will only reach between 4.5 to 5 million units in 2024” – which would be down on 2023. It gives two reasons for this pessimistic picture …
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Update: A court filing has confirmed that the company now has more than enough money to repay customers. In recognition of the lost gains, creditors owed $50k or less will receive around 118% of their deposit value at the time of the Chapter 11 filing.
In a surprise development, bankruptcy lawyers say that FTX customers – once considered to have lost almost everything – are now expected to get their money back in full from the remains of the cryptocurrency company …
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Smart home company Brilliant has announced that it has run out of money, after failing to raise more capital in an attempted funding round.
While its smart home controllers and light switches continue to work for now, there’s no guarantee that will remain the case for long given the lack of either HomeKit or Matter compatibility …
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Meta is testing a new option which allows users to cross-post from Instagram to Threads. The move is likely intended to boost engagement on the company’s newest social network …
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Yesterday’s Let Loose event announced new iPads, Apple Pencil, Magic Keyboard – plus a few surprises, some pleasant, some not.
There were no major surprises to the actual iPad announcements, as they were very much in line with what we’d been expecting …
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Alongside the new iPads, a new Apple Pencil Pro has been announced, priced at $129 – the same price as the Pencil 2.
The latest version of the device is a significant upgrade. However, it is only compatible with the latest iPads – both Air and Pro …
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Alongside the new iPads, we’re expecting Apple to launch a new design of iPad keyboard case today, potentially branded as the Magic Keyboard Pro.
This could give the iPad Pro and keyboard combo a more MacBook-like appearance – but could also lead a growing number of would-be iPad Pro buyers to conclude that they’d be better off with a MacBook Air …
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