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’s OpenAI partnership – which will be used to bring generative AI features to Siri – is likely just an interim one, while the company expands and deepens its own chatbot tech.
The prediction was made by Dag Kittlaus, who co-founded Siri before the tech was acquired by Apple …
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A TikTok hack allowed attackers to take control of CNN’s account, while other high-profile accounts were also targeted.
The nature of the security breach remains a mystery at present. It was said to have involved direct messaging, but was seemingly not a phishing attack …
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TSMC’s Apple chip plants cannot be moved off the island, the company has said, despite ever-growing fears of a Chinese invasion.
The chipmaker’s chairman C.C. Wei said that it had held talks with “some customers” about the idea following China carrying out war-game exercises around the island, but that it simply isn’t practical …
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An Aptoide iOS game store launches in Europe on Thursday, the third, uh, third-party app store to be announced after Setapp and AltStore.
All three companies are taking advantage of the changes Apple was forced to make in the EU by the Digital Markets Act, which opens up the App Store to competition for the first time …
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The latest version of Apple’s iPhone recycling robot no longer unscrews devices in order to access the innards; instead, it rips them apart.
The change is one of many that have seen the practicality of Apple’s recycling robots grow from something which took 12 minutes per phone – which the company admits was really just a research project – to 18 seconds …
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Update: After reports that cloud storage provider Snowflake may have been compromised, the company said there is no evidence of this. Reading between the lines, the attack may have been made via Snowflake, but it appears to have been TicketMaster credentials that were compromised.
A TicketMaster hack has been confirmed by the company in an SEC security filing, stating that personal data of its users has been offered for sale on the dark web. The agency has not confirmed the scale of what appears to have been a massive breach …
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ChatGPT is down for many, with OpenAI acknowledging on its status page that the chatbot is “unavailable for some users.”
The partial outage appears to be global, though recovery does now appear to be in progress, with DownDetector showing a decline in the number of reports …
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A report last month suggested that we might see the first foldable iPhone in 2026, but market intelligence company TrendForce has described this as “unlikely.”
The company, which monitors and forecasts demand for components, says that 2027 is the earliest date Apple is likely to launch a folding iPhone …
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The judge in the Apple versus Epic Games case has told the Cupertino company that she wants to see all of the company’s documents relating to its revised App Store policies – and she has strongly emphasised that she means all of them.
It follows earlier remarks in which she strongly implied that Apple was guilty of bad-faith compliance with the antitrust ruling she made back in 2021 …
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An engineer with extensive experience of working with Bluetooth found himself bamboozled when told that he needed to enable a wireless connection to use a cheap pair of wired Lightning headphones – and that turned out to be correct …
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It’s now 15 years since the last of Apple’s award-winning “I’m a Mac/I’m a PC” ads, but rival companies still believe it’s clever to use the Mac actor to try to sell rival products.
After Huawei and Intel, Qualcomm is the latest company to make the attempt, with an incredibly cringeworthy ad in which the Mac guy – played by Justin Long – decides it’s time to get a PC …
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We’re a little over a week away from the WWDC keynote, in which Apple is expected to announce a slew of new AI features as part of iOS 18.
This is expected to be the point at which Siri gets generative AI smarts, thanks to a deal with OpenAI to incorporate ChatGPT tech …
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The TikTok algorithm could be split, claims a report, with a US-only version used for the hugely popular app to try to avoid a ban.
Developer Bytedance has tweeted that the report is not accurate, but its message appears to be more a repetition of its legal stance than a specific denial …
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Apple has enjoyed a rare App Store antitrust win, as a Chinese court dismissed a lawsuit accusing it of charging excessive commissions.
The iPhone maker is facing an onslaught of antitrust legislation and lawsuits around the world, most notably surrounding the App Store …
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A new report says that iOS 18 Siri features will include a better contextual understanding of things like people, companies, events, and locations.
A new ‘catch-up’ feature is also said to be included in the AI feature-set, where you can ask Siri to bring you up to speed on notifications you’ve received while away from your phone …
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Hands-on reviews of the new Vision Pro Marvel app What if…? are in, and are best described as mixed.
One reviewer said that it was “maybe the best hour I’ve spent on the device since I got it,” while another described it as a “flimsy” and “meh” experience. Both, however, were upbeat about the future potential …
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Meta is offering teenagers a strengthened version of its Instagram Limits tool. When set to its highest level, only Close Friends will be able to comment, reply, tag, mention, or message them.
It’s the latest development in the company’s protections for teens, after anti-grooming blocks and nudity blurring introduced earlier in the year …
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Japan’s Individual Number Card – also known as My Number Card – is coming to Apple Wallet, a first for official identity documents outside of the US.
The country clearly expects residents to take some time to get used to the idea: It’s being announced around a year ahead of its rollout next spring …
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The Mophie Juice Pack for iPhone 15 is the latest iteration of a product the company has been offering for around a decade now.
The battery case claims to extend the battery life of an iPhone 15, iPhone 15 Pro, or iPhone 15 Pro Max by 50% – but in my testing, did better than that …
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The controversial practice of parts pairing has been banned in right to repair legislation in Colorado, following a similar ban in Oregon back in March.
Apple has come under fire on a number of fronts for the practice, which can make it difficult or even impossible to carry out repairs using parts cannibalised from scrapped devices …
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The Internet Archive, best known for its Wayback Machine, says that it has been under a sustained distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack for several days. The non-profit says that it is in contact with the attackers, though their motivation is as yet unclear …
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It looks like the next Apple antitrust battle will take place in India, as the country prepares its own competition law, which is closely modelled on Europe’s Digital Markets Act (DMA). We learned last week that Japan is also close to implementing its own version of the DMA.
It’s the DMA which has required Apple to permit third-party App Stores, as well as give iPhone users a proactive choice of web browser …
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The Apple Store TRX, the company’s first ever retail store in Malaysia, has been one of the worst-kept secrets in Kuala Lumpur – but is now finally official.
Apple has revealed that the store opens at 10am on June 22, and is offering wallpaper to celebrate the funky design …
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Plans for the rollout of the next-gen CarPlay don’t seem to be going too well. Despite Porsche being announced as one of the first companies in line to support it, the company has implied that its first hybrid Porsche 911 won’t include it.
The German sports car maker says that the $164k 2025 Porsche 911 Carrera GTS will see CarPlay “integrated more deeply into the vehicle,” but went on to imply that this doesn’t mean it will be the next-generation experience Apple first announced almost two years ago …
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