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 saw the first potential Vision Pro competitor yesterday, in the form of the $699 Xreal Air 2 Ultra – and Sony has also now announced its own device. Interestingly, it doesn’t yet appear to have a name.
As with the Xreal glasses, how much competition the Sony headset will pose to Vision Pro depends on who would be buying it, and for what reason …
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In a significant breach of Apple’s privacy measures, a new report says that AirDrop was cracked by the Chinese government, to reveal the phone number and email address of senders.
The anonymity of AirDrop was one of the reasons it has been commonly used by activists to share information about protests, and other information censored by the government …
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The latest upcoming retail store in South Korea looks like a relatively modest one, but it comes with some cute new Apple wallpaper.
The colorful, graffiti-inspired logo also cleverly incorporates the name of the store in Hangul characters …
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Apple last year lost some 2023 iPhone sales, thanks to growing competition from Samsung and born-again competition from Huawei, but a new report today shows that the Cupertino company remains by far the most dominant player in the premium smartphone market.
Update: An analyst report suggests that the impact may be even greater than Counterpoint’s data indicates – see update at the bottom of the piece …
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Apple has announced that prescription lenses for Vision Pro will cost $149, significantly less than had been predicted by Bloomberg back in the summer of last year.
There will also be reading lenses – a range of standard-strength lenses without a prescription …
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We know that Apple will be strongly encouraging Vision Pro buyers to come to an Apple Store for a personal fitting session, as this is key to both the user experience and comfort. But a Vision Pro iPhone app may serve as an alternative for anyone nowhere near a store.
Apple may also recommend that all owners use the app from time to time to ensure that they still have the optimum alignment …
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The popular podcasting app Castro appears to have ceased functioning, and the website has gone. The latter appears to be because the domain is no more, as emails also bounce.
A former employee predicted back in November of last year that the app would be shut down within two months, a prediction which now appears to be accurate despite the company’s comments at the time …
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The EU antitrust head, Margrethe Vestager, is next week scheduled to meet Tim Cook and other CEOs of big tech companies.
It comes at a time when Apple appears to be softening its opposition to antitrust issues, and preparing for a more cooperative relationship with competition authorities …
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If you’ve ever tried to create nested folders in Apple Notes, you might have concluded that it’s not possible. Update: One method which failed before on iPhone now work – more below.
It’s easiest on a Mac – but even then it’s not exactly an intuitive process, so I’m guessing I’m not the only one who didn’t know how to do it …
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A new Qualcomm spatial computing chip has been announced, intended to allow companies to create their own Vision Pro competitors.
Five companies will be using the new chip, as they work on mixed reality headsets designed to go, uh, head-to-head with Apple’s spatial computer – and the first of these is set to be revealed on Monday, January 8 …
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The Apple Card Savings interest rate has been increased a second time, just two weeks after a previous hike. The annual percentage yield (APY) is now 4.35%.
While there are still better deals out there, Apple does seem to be aiming to remain broadly competitive, as it seeks a new partner bank …
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iPhone photography has gotten better and better, to the point where I now happily use it as my primary camera. There are, though, some areas where a dedicated camera still gives significantly better results, and long exposure photos is one of those.
Spectre is an iPhone app which aims to close that gap, performing photo-stacking trickery to simulate photos with exposures of up to 30 seconds …
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A leaker with a mixed track-record says that Apple will use this year’s WWDC to announce some new Siri generative AI capabilities.
The post is vague, stating only that it will “add more personalization and natural conversations to Siri,” with just a few other elements …
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Government Internet censorship is a permanent fact of life in some countries, but there are many more countries that impose Internet blocks in response to specific events. A new report says that happened on 196 occasions last year, with hundreds of millions of people affected …
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As Meta faces increasing legal scrutiny over Facebook data-gathering to serve personalized ads, its latest tactic is to claim that a feature is really intended to help users …
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Apple last year described proposed new UK surveillance powers as “a serious and direct threat to data security and information privacy” – and it has repeated its opposition to the proposed legal changes, though the techUK trade body.
The techUK group, whose members include Apple, has written an open letter to the British government, requesting an urgent meeting to discuss proposed amendments to the Investigatory Powers Act …
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One of the features that distinguishes Apple’s headset from its rivals is the outer Vision Pro display. This displays colorful abstract patterns when the user is fully immersed in content, and a simulation of their eyes when they are in augmented reality mode, and able to see their surroundings.
An Apple patent credited to former design lead Jony Ive shows that the company initially considered many more outer display options …
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Apps like eBay and Airbnb will be reporting your earnings to tax authorities, under a new global agreement which took effect yesterday …
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Whenever an iPhone comes with a new feature, it’s not always obvious ahead of time how useful it will turn out to be. In the case of my iPhone 15 Pro Max, the 5x camera has been great for one specific purpose, but my favorite feature by far is the Action button.
To me, it’s one of those small things which makes a worthwhile difference in everyday use – though it has required me to get used to holding my iPhone ‘upside down’ …
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Fidelity, a major private shareholder in the company formerly known as Twitter, has issued a new X valuation – stating that the company is now worth only 28% of the original $44B purchase price.
It further marked down the value of its shares from 33% following X owner Elon Musk telling major brands to “go f*ck yourself” after they paused advertising on the platform …
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The US antitrust case against Apple’s App Store exclusivity is “firing on all cylinders” according to the head of the Department of Justice unit responsible for policing breaches of competition law.
The implication is that Apple may soon be forced to allow third-party app stores and/or sideloading in the US as well as in Europe …
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We’ve seen Linux running on Apple Silicon Macs before, but this week marks the first time you can run Fedora Linux on M1 and M2 Macs.
This is a collaboration between Asahi Linux and the Fedora Project, and marks a key milestone in a project which kicked off back in 2021 …
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2023 was the year of podcast cutbacks, argues a new piece today, pointing to a whole slew of layoffs and show cancellations.
It also argues that iOS 17 played a role, by replacing an artificially inflated picture of podcast popularity with a more realistic one …
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The Department of Justice (DOJ) is carrying out at least a preliminary antitrust investigation into Apple blocking Beeper, the unofficial app which gave Android users access to iMessage. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) also appears to be “evaluating” Apple’s actions.
Today’s report follows a call for a DOJ investigation by a bipartisan group of senators, and Bleeper’s announcement that it has now given up any hope of keeping the app working …
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