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.
We speculated at the time that the decision to withdraw Apple Pay Later was probably driven by a desire to get ahead of upcoming legislation, and a piece today suggests that it’s actually a new interpretation of a very old law.
The Truth in Lending Act was passed in 1968, and grants consumers a number of protections when it comes to credit cards – and Apple Pay Later seemed set to fall within scope …
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If you’ve got an Intel Mac of up to six years old, there was mixed news for most when Apple announced macOS 15 Sequoia. Most Macs that can run macOS 14 can still run this year’s version – but Intel models unsurprisingly won’t get the headline Apple Intelligence features.
A historical analysis of how long Macs continue to support the latest version of macOS shows that – with a couple of exceptions – not much changed this year on the surface, but it does still leave the question of Apple’s future plans for its Intel-chipped machines …
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Apple has added a new tool to its website, to help you choose the best Mac for your needs.
The tool asks you a number of questions – including your desired maximum spend – and then makes recommendations …
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Apple’s decision to block iPhone PC emulators has been criticized by developers, who have variously said that it is confusing, inconsistent, and probably illegal.
One even said that not even Apple’s own app reviewers appear to understand the company’s policy, because they took two months to reach a decision …
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Apple battery supplier TDK has announced the development of a technology it says could be used in next-gen solid-state batteries to offer one hundred times the energy density of existing ones …
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BBB National Programs – which grew out of the Better Business Bureau – has said that the T-Mobile price lock guarantee is no such thing, and called on the company to stop advertising it.
The move follows the company increasing the prices of some older mobile plans by either $2 or $5 per line …
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A years-long Apple Pay antitrust investigation is about to be settled, according to a new report this morning.
It says that while there are still ongoing discussions about some of the finer details, the European Union is set to agree to the latest changes proposed by Apple …
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Apple hasn’t had much luck persuading car makers to adopt its next-gen CarPlay, in which its own UI takes over all or most of the vehicle’s displays. But a feature known as punch-through might be the compromise which gets the company at least some of the way there.
Punch-through was initially designed to allow the car’s own UI to take over in very limited cases, like automatically engaging backup cameras when reverse gear is selected, but it could be applied more generally to keep everyone happy …
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An interesting piece suggests that Apple’s AI logo* – along with the new Siri icon – is intended to look friendly, unthreatening, and is deliberately non-anthropomorphic.
*Yeah, that could be Apple Artificial Intelligence, or Apple Apple Intelligence. Thanks, Tim.
Other companies appear to have set themselves the same goals with their AI offerings, hence all the simple, colorful graphics …
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The Apple podcast transcription feature was officially launched in iOS 17.4, but the company says that it actually introduced a very limited version way back in 2018.
Apple says that it took so long to launch as a fully-fledged accessibility feature because the company wanted to make it universal, and to incorporate learnings from Apple Music lyrics …
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Leaked images have revealed that a new Philips Hue Twilight bedside lamp is on the way. In addition to a standard angled lamp, there are separate LEDs at the rear which can be used to simulate sunrise and sunset.
Philips already released the Philips Hue Signe gradient lamp back in 2022, with bedside tables one of the suggested uses, but the Twilight appears to take a more focused approach to bedroom use …
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The iOS 18 beta 1 has brought some of the promised new changes, but it doesn’t include Siri improvements, ChatGPT access, or many of the Apple Intelligence features (though there are a few exceptions).
Apple hasn’t revealed a precise timeline for each of the new features, likely wanting to avoid making promises it can’t keep, but there are some indications of what we can expect when …
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Three new WhatsApp video call features are aiming to make the app more competitive with FaceTime – including the company’s own take on SharePlay.
The company also emphasized the recent improvements it made to both audio and video quality …
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A class action lawsuit filed on behalf of 12,000 current and former staff claims that Apple underpaid female employees over a four-year period.
The lawsuit said that while the Cupertino company didn’t do this deliberately, it had two policies in place which led to this result …
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A research paper explicitly says that Apple doesn’t use your data to train Apple Intelligence. This differs from OpenAI’s policy, which does use your ChatGPT sessions to help train its model.
However, Apple says that it does scrape websites for content via Applebot, and website owners must explicitly opt-out if they don’t want this to happen …
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Yesterday brought a surprise report that Apple isn’t paying OpenAI for the ChatGPT deal, which will bring the chatbot to Apple devices later in the year.
It’s an impressive piece of negotiating by Apple, which would have been expected to have to pay a significant fee for all the server access provided, and an interesting gamble by OpenAI …
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Including audiobooks in the premium tier is nothing more than a Spotify scam, say music publishers, intended to cheat consumers and music labels alike.
They say the sole purpose of adding audiobooks into the subscription was to find an excuse for charging consumers more while paying music labels less …
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A South Korean regulator has said that Apple collected user location data without consent, and fined the company 210 million won (around $153k) for a privacy violation.
Apple was one of 188 companies found to have violated the Act on the Protection and Use of Location Information …
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Apple’s spatial computer is about to go on sale in eight more countries, and Vision Pro pre-orders will open tomorrow for three of them, and on June 28 for the rest.
Sales are being slightly staggered, with China, Japan, and Singapore first in line – and Australia, Canada, France, Germany, and the UK following close behind …
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Every WWDC sees a number of apps Sherlocked by Apple – the colloquial term for Apple announcing new built-in features which replicate those previously available in third-party apps.
It’s always a tough break for indie developers to see the market for their apps disappear with a wave of Tim Cook’s hand, and this year is no exception …
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Demand for Apple Intelligence features will power an iPhone supercycle, according to an analyst – with Apple one of three companies in the race to become a $4T company.
Apple Intelligence will require an iPhone 15 Pro or better, meaning that the majority of current iPhone owners would need to upgrade if they want access to it …
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I recently had to Google how to get color text in the Apple Notes app, because the way to do this in iOS 17 is rather deeply hidden!
Especially if you want to do it in the iPhone or iPad app, you have to use one of three workarounds, because – strangely – the feature isn’t directly supported …
Update: Color text highlighting is now supported in iOS 18 beta 1, with some limitations. See the end of the piece for details.
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Perhaps upset that nobody cares about his own pet chatbot, Grok, Elon Musk launched a baseless attack on Apple’s AI announcements – saying that the iPhone maker wasn’t smart enough to create its own AI, and that ChatGPT isn’t safe.
OpenAI’s chief technology officer has now hit back at the latter part of the claim …
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iPhone mirroring in macOS Sequoia will be one of the cooler features when it lands, but sadly there isn’t any way to mirror your iPhone on Vision Pro.
“Aha,” you may be thinking, “I can think of a simple workaround for that!” But sadly the obvious cheat here doesn’t work …
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