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.
The news doesn’t get any better for FineWoven cases. After being solidly panned by 9to5Mac readers, editors, and major retail chains, a series of polls on social media sites saw the majority of owners describe them as “junk.”
Update: The combined results of three social media polls show that 53% describe the case as “a piece of junk,” while only 21% considered it has held up well …
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X live video is now available inside the Spaces feature. Previously, the group chat feature only supported live audio.
However, the feature is somewhat different from the Periscope service which Twitter bought and later replaced with an integrated live video broadcast, and bears more of a resemblance to Twitch …
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Analyst Ming-Chi Kuo believes that Vision Pro demand is higher than Apple originally expected, with US shipments expected to hit 200-250k units this year.
While there was speculation about how many people only bought Vision Pro to experience it before sending it back it at the end of the 14-day return window, he estimates that the current return rate has dropped to just 1% …
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The A17 Pro chip powering the iPhone 15 Pro and Pro Max models was the first in the world to use a 3-nanometer process, and Apple is already looking ahead to a 2nm chip in 2025, and a 1.4nm one beyond that, perhaps as early as 2026.
A new report today takes a fascinating look at just what is involved in these unimaginably small process sizes …
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The team behind previous iPhone and iPad developer camps has announced VisionDevCamp, a hackathon-style event for developers interested in working on Vision Pro apps …
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It’s not the first time we’ve heard it reported that the Apple Car is cancelled, but yesterday’s Bloomberg report does seem definitive – with two very senior Apple execs said to have made an official announcement to the Titan team.
But while it may be dramatic news in one sense, after the company spent a huge amount of money over more than a decade, the evidence is that AAPL investors were almost entirely unmoved …
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Apple lawyers reportedly met with the Department of Justice last week, to make a last-minute plea for the agency not to file a US antitrust suit against the company.
Neither Apple nor the DOJ commented on the meeting, which follows the iPhone maker being accused of “malicious compliance” in its response to both the Supreme Court decision on the App Store, and European antitrust legislation taking effect next month …
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Apple and Meta won’t just be competing with their VR headsets – they are also likely to be gearing up for a later battle between Apple Glasses and Meta Glasses.
While both devices are believed to be years from launch, a new report today says that we’ll get a sneak peek at Meta Glasses later this year …
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An Apple Ring patent application has been granted, amid conflicting reports about the status of the company’s development of such a device.
However, while recent reports focus more on the applications of a ring as a health sensor as a cheaper alternative to an Apple Watch, this patent is more concerned with using it as an input device …
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Some enterprising types are offering Vision Pro rental in China to satisfy demand to try the product, which is currently only available for purchase in the US.
Just one of these rental outlets says that it has had more than 10,000 customers since the service launched, just a couple of days after the device first went on sale …
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Update: Meta has confirmed that it’s working on this feature, but has not revealed when we can expect it to launch.
There are signs that an Instagram Friends Map may be in development, seemingly replicating the Snap Map location sharing feature first launched on Snapchat back in 2017 …
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Our expectations for the ProMotion always-on display for both iPhone 16 and iPhone 17 models have been echoed in a new supply-chain report.
Way back in May of last year, display analyst Ross Young shared what he believes to be Apple’s roadmap for 2024 and 2025 …
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Tomorrow is the date of Apple’s annual shareholder meeting, and the company this year faces five shareholder proposals – and recommends voting against all of them.
The company went as far as trying to exclude one of them, but the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) ruled that it must be put to a vote …
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We first spotted signs of Apple blocking web apps in iOS 17.4 within Europe, a move which was later confirmed and explained by the company.
But while Apple argues that it made the move in order to comply with antitrust legislation, it may instead lead to the company facing a fresh antitrust investigation …
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Apple Arcade is being criticized by developers for lack of transparency around payments, falling payouts, and cancelled projects.
There is, though, hope that Netflix’s move into gaming may lead Apple to showing its own subscription games service more love …
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The iPhone has become an increasingly capable camera over the years for both still photos and video, but there are still a number of big differences between an iPhone and a dedicated camera.
Sensor size is the biggest of these, of course. That has greatest impact on low-light photography, and can be challenging for video in particular. But the difference between hardware and software controls is another …
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The first invitations to participate in the Reddit Directed Share Program (DSP) – in which moderators and very active users will get preferential access to shares – have now been issued.
Some moderators and other users with high Reddit karma have been invited to register, but so far vocal users seem unimpressed …
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A limited number of Apple support staff are reportedly using an internal AI tool to help answer customer questions. The tool is reportedly known as Apple Ask.
The ChatGPT-style tool lets advisors paste in or paraphrase a support question, and the AI then searches Apple’s internal knowledge base to generate answers …
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A handful of owners have reported spontaneous Vision Pro glass cracks while the device was simply left overnight (see photo below) …
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An iPhone scam carried out in Iran has reportedly generated around $35M, after celebrities were hired to promote the fake deal. It was made possible because Apple isn’t allowed to sell iPhones in the country.
The man alleged to be behind the scam has been located abroad by Iranian police, who say that he will be extradited back to the country through Interpol …
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AT&T says that the widespread outage which started in the early hours of yesterday morning and later resolved was caused by a software update.
There had earlier been speculation that it might have been the result of a cyber attack, but while there are said to be “no indications of malicious activity” so far, both the Department of Homeland Security and the FBI are investigating …
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The long-awaited Reddit IPO is finally official, as the company formally notified the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) of its plans to take the company public on the New York Stock Exchange with the ticker symbol RDDT.
Reddit has also revealed that the controversial $60M/year deal to provide access to user-generated content to an AI company was with Google …
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There’s growing recognition of the AI threats we may face as companies push further and faster with artificial intelligence tech. Responding to this, the US Justice Department has appointed its first ever federal law enforcement officer focused on AI …
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The FDA blood glucose measurement statement yesterday seemed, on the face of it, to be bad news for anyone hoping to see the feature in a future Apple Watch.
But while the health agency is absolutely right to take a cautious approach, this doesn’t mean that we should give up hope …
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