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.
A new report says that Apple’s spend on Killers of the Flower Moon was between $200M and $250M in production costs – including at least $25M to DiCaprio – with millions more on marketing.
The movie, due for theater release next week, before a later release on Apple TV+, represents a big gamble for the company …
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The Google search payment – the annual amount Google pays to Apple in return for being the default search engine in Safari – reportedly makes up 14-16% of the Cupertino company’s total profits.
With that payment now threatened by the antitrust case against Google, Bernstein analysts look at what that could mean for Apple …
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Major content moderation failures by both X and Meta are serving to underline the risks of both deliberate disinformation and inadvertent misinformation impacting on next year’s presidential elections …
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A patent granted today describes a possible way to reduce neck strain when using an Apple headset. It follows a report that the company is concerned about neck fatigue from the Vision Pro’s weight.
Counter-intuitively, the method proposed would make a future version of Vision Pro heavier, rather than lighter …
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Update: Unity’s CEO has now left the company’s employ, with immediate effect. The decision reflects the anger felt by developers about the original announcement.
Mobile game developers who rely on the Unity game engine have forced a rethink after the company announced changes to its pricing policy that would have proven a disaster for some. The company is now offering developers a choice of charging models.
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Most of those using a 2019 Mac Pro should switch to the Mac Studio, rather than the 2023 Mac Pro, argues Macworld videographer and gamer Thiago Trevisan.
He argues that there’s only one reason to choose the current Mac Pro over the much more compact Mac Studio, despite the fact that the 2019 model was “the best workstation [he has] ever owned” …
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Two different market intelligence agencies both reported that Q3 Mac shipments fell dramatically year-on-year, experiencing a far greater drop than competing PC makers.
IDC estimates that global Mac shipments fell 23.1% year-on-year, while Gartner has the number at 24.2%, against an overall PC market decline of around 8%. But neither number should be any great surprise …
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The vast majority of my smart home control comprises asking Siri to activate a scene – or having one automatically triggered by a time or event. For example, when going to bed, a single command switches on low lighting in the bedroom while switching off all other lights in the home.
Most of these scenes are created from scratch, thinking about exactly what I want to happen in particular circumstances – but there’s another approach I’d like to be able to take …
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You know something’s bad when you’re about to write a feature request and then realise you already did do, more than a year go. Some 18 months after I asked Apple to fix the awful iPhone jiggle mode, nothing has changed, so consider this my renewed plea.
It was travel which brought it to mind last time, while this time around it was just doing a small rejig of my Home screen to remove a couple of apps I use less frequently, replacing them with ones I now use more often …
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The Chinese developer behind the hugely popular Genshin Impact mobile game has twice tried to evade Apple’s 30% cut on in-app purchases, according to a new report.
This is despite a close relationship between gaming giant miHoYo and Apple, including multiple awards, a personal visit by CEO Tim Cook, and two of the company’s games being featured during the iPhone 15 launch …
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Snapchat’s My AI feature is facing the prospect of a ban in the UK, over concerns that it may be putting the privacy of children at risk.
It follows separate user outrage at the ChatGPT integration being pinned to the top of their chats, and a mix of concern and amusement when the chatbot went rogue …
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The Community Notes feature on X is being used to challenge claims made in ads by Apple, Samsung, Uber, and others.
A report says that this is adding another barrier to the willingness of major brands to advertise on the troubled platform …
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Mark Gurman’s latest newsletter says that Apple remains concerned about the Vision Pro’s weight and is working on making the next generation of the headset lighter.
Gurman also describes the difficulties the company is facing in dealing with the prescription lenses that will be needed for many customers …
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This may be something of an edge case, but as it caused me to waste a considerable amount of time Googling ‘Recovering Mac storage’ before the problem solved itself, I thought I’d share.
Having recently completed a 16-minute micro documentary, one of the things that shocked me was just how much drive space is eaten up! While the final cut was around one minute of interview per person, and a similar amount of dance footage, I of course shot more …
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Apple’s long-running battle with Korean antitrust regulators is showing no signs of ending any time soon.
In the latest development, the Korea Communications Commission (KCC) has found both Apple and Google guilty of anti-competitive behavior, required changes to their respective app store policies, and warned of possible fines …
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A Homeland Security report on the illegal use of smartphone location data by multiple government agencies – including the US Secret Service – has now been made public. The report concludes that three separate US agencies broke the law by breaching privacy protections.
The report was originally categorized as Law Enforcement Sensitive, but this classification has now been removed, and a redacted version made available to the public …
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One of the new iPhone 15 Pro features is somewhat niche but incredibly useful to video enthusiasts using their iPhone as a B-camera or C-camera: You can shoot directly to an SSD.
But a reviewer learned of one problem the hard way: If your cable doesn’t support USB 3 speeds, the iPhone won’t warn you – it will simply drop frames. Lots and lots of frames …
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Samsung’s Galaxy S23 Ultra is the biggest competitor to the iPhone 15 Pro Max, especially when it comes to the camera capabilities.
CNET decided to put the two models into a camera shootout by a professional photographer, comparing the results achieved across a wide variety of types of shots …
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The iPhone 15 overheating problem was both confirmed and visualized using thermal imaging, and now the same tech has been used to show the impact of Apple’s software fix.
In our own poll, a full 57% of 9to5Mac readers with iPhone 15 models had experienced the overheating problem …
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A year ago, filmmaker Joey Helms created a stunning example of the video capabilities of the iPhone 14 Pro – and he’s back with an even more impressive example of iPhone 15 Pro cinematic video (below).
Helms told us that the addition this year of the LOG Image Profile was by far the greatest improvement, but there are other worthwhile upgrades too …
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When Apple chipmaker TSMC was granted federal subsidies for building its first US plant, creating jobs for American workers was one of the key arguments. But with hiring well underway, a new report says that almost half of the TSMC Arizona plant hires are from Taiwan.
Additionally, plans for a six-step expansion program – intended to allow the Arizona plant to rival the production volumes of those in Taiwan – are now said to be unlikely to proceed ….
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Photoshop AI features are already incredibly impressive, thanks to things like generative fill and generative expand, but the company isn’t done yet.
The company has just provided a sneak preview of a new AI feature expected to be officially announced at next week’s Adobe Max event, and it looks pretty stunning …
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MacBook Pro battery life is set to be boosted by more efficient backlighting on the upcoming models, according to a new supply chain report.
It suggests that Apple will be using brighter miniLEDs for the backlight, but won’t be increasing the maximum brightness level of the displays …
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Returning packages is one of life’s most tedious chores, especially when it involves a trip to an inconveniently located USPO, FedEx, or UPS office …
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