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 co-founder Steve Jobs was infamous for his lack of patience with photoshoots, and another 40th anniversary of the Mac piece includes a story of how Apple hired a photographer for a week, flew him to Sweden, hired a helicopter – but he still didn’t get the photo because Steve changed his mind …
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Spotify in-app subscriptions aren’t currently possible, thanks to Apple’s 30% cut – but the company has today previewed the experience it hopes to offer to European customers from March.
The streaming music company shows animations comparing the current in-app experience with the one it hopes to be able to offer once Europe’s Digital Markets Act (DMA) antitrust law comes into force on March 7 …
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A next generation Siri version is set to be powered by a generative AI chatbot, with analysts expecting it to be launched with iOS 18, and announced at this year’s WWDC.
While Apple has been criticized for the way that Siri has lagged behind, a new report says that this is because the company is aiming to be far more ambitious than existing generative AI systems …
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Macintosh 40th anniversary celebrations continue tomorrow with a live event bringing together many key members of the original project team.
Participants will include Bill Atkinson, Steve Capps, Andy Cunningham, Andy Hertzfeld, Bruce Horn, Susan Kare, Dan’l Lewin, and Mike Murray …
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HP is pushing over-the-air firmware updates to its printers, bricking them if they are using third-party ink cartridges. But don’t worry, it’s not a money-grab, says the company – it’s just trying to protect you from the well-known risk of viruses embedded in ink cartridges …
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Vision Pro isn’t large enough to accommodate eyeglasses, so wearers will need prescription lens inserts instead. But that might not always be the case: A new Apple patent describes a way to electrically adjust the displays to suit your vision.
The system Apple describes is done dynamically, so it can effectively match a different prescription for each eye, and also allow switching the same device between multiple users with different prescriptions …
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A reported Trello data breach has seen the personal details of more than 15 million users put up for sale on the dark web.
A separate Loan Depot ransomware attack resulted in more than 16 million customer accounts compromised, taking a number of the company’s web services offline …
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Apple Maps errors have reportedly been costing small businesses thousands of dollars, by incorrectly showing them as permanently closed.
Business owners also say that it can be hard to correct the error, despite going through the process Apple recommends …
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The Macintosh 40th anniversary isn’t actually until tomorrow, but the celebrations are underway, with Apple execs sharing their own perspective on the machine which ultimately transformed not just how we interacted with personal computers, but also set the scene for them to become mass-market consumer devices.
I’m old. Old enough to have bought that very first Macintosh, all the way back in 1984 – but was only able to actually do so because, in those days, Apple needed the likes of me more than we needed Apple …
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A WhatsApp AirDrop style feature is under development, and from screens discovered inside the latest Android beta, it looks like a rather close copy of the original.
This includes privacy features: As with AirDrop, file transfers are encrypted, and your phone number is not revealed …
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The start of a new year is a time many of us use to take stock – of our goals, our habits, the ways in which we spend our time. For me, one significant change has been adopting a more sane approach to social media, and apps in general.
I’m a huge fan of technology, of course, but I also fully acknowledge that tech also has its downsides – and social media in particular has been a very mixed blessing …
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Meta has announced a radical new move to comply with European antitrust requirements taking effect in March. The company will let you unlink your Instagram, Facebook, and Messenger accounts – as well as those for Facebook Marketplace and Facebook Gaming.
This means you’ll have the option of setting each up as a completely separate account, with no shared data between them …
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Vision Pro sales have been estimated at 160,000 to 180,000 over the first three days of pre-orders in an analyst report. That’s somewhere over 40% of the 400,000 units Apple was reportedly expecting to sell in the first year.
While the estimate sounds impressive, the analyst does inject a note of caution, and we’d also add our own riders to it …
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With pre-orders open, we know which of Apple’s Vision Pro apps will be pre-installed – but we also know some major third-party apps have no current plans to support the device.
While there’s still time for things to change, it’s already clear that some developers have made a deliberate decision to stay off Vision Pro, going so far as to block their iPad apps from running. That’s likely for three reasons …
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iPhone users are set to see Apple Pay competitor apps being launched by banks and finance companies, after the Cupertino company gave in to European antitrust pressure to allow them access to the NFC chip.
But before regulators give the okay to the concessions Apple has offered, they are asking both finance companies and iPhone owners whether they want the company to offer more …
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A sketchy report suggests that iPhone 16 storage could max out at 2TB on the two Pro models. It should be noted that the same source said the same thing about the iPhone 15 Pro.
This time around, it’s suggested that Apple would achieve this using a new form of flash memory which is denser and cheaper …
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Instagram and Facebook collect your data from thousands of companies, according to an experiment carried out by Consumer Reports.
Separately, the company is the largest reporter of potential child sexual abuse materials (CSAM), but there is a legal problem with the way many of these reports are submitted …
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Daring Fireball’s John Gruber has said that Apple’s decision to charge 27% commission on app sales made outside the App Store “reeks of greed and avarice.”
He also backs the view I expressed yesterday that the iPhone maker is putting itself in the firing line of regulators and legislators, while a majority of 9to5Mac commenters appear to disagree …
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The second TSMC Arizona chip plant has been delayed, just like the first one. The company had previously said that the plant would come online in 2026, but now says this has been pushed back to 2027 or 2028.
Additionally, the chipmaker says that the second plant – initially set to be making advanced 3nm chips – may also be downgraded to larger-process chips …
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Apple is offering a special edition Year of the Dragon AirPods Pro model in China, Hong Kong, and some other countries …
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Apple trade-in prices have been cut across a wide range of products. The reduction in trade-in values for 2022 iPhones ranges from $20 to $50 …
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The Supreme Court’s decision not to hear appeals by either Apple or Epic Games means that the antitrust case is officially decided – and the iPhone maker is now demanding that the games company pay $73M of its $81M legal expenses.
The iPhone maker says that as there were ten issues at stake, and Apple won on nine of them, Epic should pay 90% of its legal bill …
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The US Supreme Court yesterday decided that the original ruling in the Epic Games case should stand – and Apple’s response to the antitrust ruling has been uncompromising, to put it politely.
The company’s announcement that it will allow external payments but still claim a 27% commission on sales made outside the App Store is effectively Apple giving the middle finger not just to Epic Games – which may be understandable – but also to the court which made the original ruling, and to antitrust regulators …
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A report of an Apple GPU security flaw has been confirmed by the company, acknowledging that the iPhone 12 and M2 MacBook Air are affected.
An exploit has been demonstrated by security researchers, which would allow an attacker to view data processed by the chip, including the results of things like ChatGPT queries …
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