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 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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The Apple Watch ban which yesterday saw the Series 9 and Ultra models removed from sale may not be the last.
A Stanford law professor warns that we are likely to see more patent clashes between the consumer electronics and health tech worlds, and that the results can be both unpredictable and dramatic …
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There have been recurring rumors that a new Apple Watch band connector is in the works, rendering existing bands incompatible with future Watch models.
There are three reasons to believe that the reports are true, but I’d expect the change to be a whole lot less controversial than some are suggesting …
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We learned back in May that Apple is already using its own AI chatbot internally, which some have dubbed Apple GPT. A new research paper appears to be geared to enabling a ChatGPT-style system to run on iPhones.
A second Apple AI paper looks at ways to generate animated 3D avatars from standard video, with obvious application to Vision Pro …
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Apple Pay is down for some, with Apple’s system status page noting that the same is true for the Apple Card and Apple Cash.
As always, the “some users are affected” message can mean anything from a small number of users to almost everyone …
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One macOS feature I really like is the ability to hide all the apps you’re not currently using with a single keystroke: CMD-Option-H.
I use this a lot when I’m writing and don’t need to reference materials in other windows. But there’s one significant issue with it …
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The Reddit moderator rebellion earlier this year doesn’t seem to have fazed CEO Steve Huffman, who says that AI moderation is part of the solution.
Huffman says that he stands by the company’s decision to charge for API access despite the fact that it was massively unpopular, and led to the demise of the leading Reddit app, Apollo …
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Death Stranding Director’s Cut was one of the games highlighted by Apple during the iPhone 15 launch, noting that it would take advantage of the hardware-accelerated ray tracing of the two Pro models.
That was due to be released before the end of the year, but the developer has now said that it needs “just a little more time” …
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Anyone with a VanMoof ebike is likely concerned after the Dutch company confirmed that it is in financial trouble (and subsequently declared bankrupt).
Update: The new owners have announced details of the rescue plan, set to roll out in the first half of 2024. This will begin with replacement parts being made available to retailers, then new sales, and finally a VanMoof e-scooter. However, reports The Verge, the US situation is more complex. The rescue plan will come to the States, but the timeline is as yet unknown.
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A DoorDash and Uber minimum wage ruling is leading to both companies implementing changes that are badly hurting the income their drivers receive from tips …
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