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 has teased the opening of a new retail store in China, Apple Jing’an. No date has been specified, but the company says it is “opening soon.”
The announcement is accompanied by an absolutely beautiful graphic, with a delicate flower unfolding in the shape of the Apple logo …
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Apple appeared to threaten Epic Games, when the company cancelled its developer account for the second time, and cited the developer’s public criticisms of the iPhone maker as one of the reasons.
The European Commissioner, who heads up the executive branch of the European Union, has now suggested that this breaks the law …
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A new supply-chain report suggests that Apple is getting ready to sell around 8.5 million OLED iPad Pro models this year.
Interestingly, it looks like the Cupertino company is expecting the 13-inch model to be the more popular of the two …
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If you want to buy an M3 MacBook Air and missed pre-orders, it seems availability isn’t an issue. Most of the standard configurations are available for in-store pickup today, or next day shipping.
Apple offers three standard configurations each for both 13-inch and 15-inch models, and four of them have immediate availability …
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Disability campaigner Colin Hughes has described eight ways that AI accessibility features could turbo-boost the experience of using Apple products this year.
Hughes – who is quadriplegic, and previously shared with us the ways in which Apple tech helps him in his daily life – is excited by the company’s focus on artificial intelligence …
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Many in the entertainment business have questioned the wisdom of the huge spends on Apple TV+ blockbuster movies, suggesting that the company is prioritizing vanity over commercial sense.
But a new report suggests that the three latest ones have proven profitable for the Cupertino company, despite low box office takings …
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Apple’s Epic ban – which saw the iPhone maker again terminate a developer account used by the games company – is being questioned by EU antitrust regulators.
More details also emerged of follow-ups to Phil Schiller’s demand for written assurances of good faith by both Epic CEO Tim Sweeney and Apple’s lawyers …
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Apple’s Entrepreneur Camp was first launched back in 2018, focusing then on app-driven business owned or led by women. The latest edition is geared to developers from Indigenous backgrounds.
Apple has today highlighted three of the camp’s success stories, representing apps in the education, fitness, and mental health sectors …
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My colleague yesterday referenced the fact that Spotify is demanding greater freedoms from Apple, but hasn’t yet taken advantage of the ones already offered to the company. Key among these is the company’s failure to implement Spotify HomePod support.
It seems pretty ridiculous to complain that Apple Music has an unfair advantage over Spotify, while at the same time failing to take advantage of a clear opportunity to partly level the playing field – and keep your HomePod-owning subscribers happy …
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Fans of manga got a pleasant surprise today, when Apple released a 19-Minute Takashi Miike film on its Japanese YouTube channel (shown below).
The film, shot entirely on an iPhone 15 Pro, is an adaption of a story by well-known Japanese manga artist Osamu Tezuka …
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The TikTok Creator Rewards Program – first launched a year ago as a limited beta under the name Creativity Program – is now available to all …
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The dream of an Apple Watch which can take blood sugar readings may be some time off yet, but if you want an iPhone-enabled blood glucose monitor, you will soon be able to buy one without a prescription.
The FDA has granted approval for Dexcom’s Stelo Glucose Biosensor System, which uses a Bluetooth connection to your iPhone …
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Campaign groups say that if the EU lets Apple get away with its response to the Digital Markets Act (DMA), then the law will be rendered toothless.
Apple, Amazon, Google, and Meta have all taken the same approach to the antitrust law, say the groups: to seek technical compliance while ensuring that their market dominance remains protected …
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Yesterday’s global meta outage seemingly took out the company’s entire network, with users unable to access Facebook, Messenger, Instagram, Threads, and Quest headsets.
The outage lasted between one and two hours for most users, and while everything now appears back to normal, questions are naturally being asked about what went wrong …
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Yesterday’s introduction of the M3 MacBook Air meant the discontinuation of the M1 MacBook Air – and with it, the very last of the models to retain the iconic wedge shape …
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X audio and video calls started rolling out last year, in a feature nobody appeared to ask for and few seem to want. We previously shared how to deactivate the feature, and now it seems there’s another reason to do so …
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Regain clarity with CleanMyPhone by MacPaw — the new AI-powered cleaning app that quickly identifies and removes blurred images, screenshots, and other clutter from your device. Download it now with a free trial.
There’s good news and bad for Apple in two different market intelligence reports. One points to Apple’s market share rising and continuing to utterly dominate the Japanese smartphone market, while the other describes a dramatic slump in iPhone sales in China.
When it comes to Japan, it’s long been the case that there’s Apple, and then, a long way behind, there’s everyone else …
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We noted yesterday that Spotify welcomed Apple being fined $2B for antitrust offences relating to streaming music services.
The tone of the company’s response, however, strongly suggests that it believes the iPhone maker will repeat what some have described as Apple’s “malicious compliance” in another antitrust case …
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The first claimed M3 MacBook Air benchmarks have appeared on Geekbench. Unsurprisingly, given both machines have the same M3 chip, performance is near-identical to the base model 14-inch M3 MacBook Pro.
The benchmarks are for a machine labelled Mac15,13, which is consistent with a 15-inch MacBook Air …
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Update: After rolling out in beta last month, Signal has announced that usernames are now available to everyone.
Signal usernames have long been inexplicably absent from the secure messaging app, requiring users to share their phone number with contacts. That’s changing, however, in the latest beta …
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There’s no doubt that one of the things making that $3,500+ price tag hard to swallow is the fact that, for most people, a Vision Pro is an accessory, not a primary device. But what happens if you try to use Vision Pro as a primary device – indeed, as your only device?
That’s the question a new piece sets out to answer, and the experiment worked surprisingly well …
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I guess most of us here find friends ask us which Mac they should buy, and for me the base model M3 15-inch MacBook Air just became the new default recommendation – even for those with somewhat demanding needs.
At $1,299, it’s a truly incredible amount of Mac for the money, even though Apple is still being somewhat stingy with the memory and storage …
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Update 8:43am PT: Beats Solo 4 are not expected to launch for several more weeks, according to a source familiar with the matter. No word on when to expect new iPads.
Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman has reported that Apple stores are planning a minor refresh this week, but he believes it to be for a new accessory, rather than a major new product.
He says that a bigger refresh is expected the following week, and it sounds like that one may point to the new iPads we’re expecting to be announced any day now, alongside the just-announced M3 MacBook Air models …
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The Wall Street Journal’s Joanna Stern says that after a month of using Apple’s new spatial computer, she’s found herself using it less and less – and would not buy Vision Pro personally.
She says that there is one killer app for the device, but that it’s hard to justify spending $3500 plus on it …
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