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.
Multiple security flaws have been found in the DeepSeek iOS app, which is still one of the most popular downloads in the App Store after topping the charts when it first launched.
The latest findings are far worse than the previous security failure which exposed chat history and other sensitive information in a database requiring no authentication …
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It’s being reported that the British government secretly ordered Apple to create a security backdoor into all content uploaded by iCloud users anywhere in the world.
Apple is certain to refuse the demand, leading to the possibility of a similar privacy stand-off to the one seen between the iPhone maker and the FBI back in the San Bernardino shooter case …
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Leica is known for making absolutely beautiful, minimalist cameras and jaw-droppingly great lenses with pricing in the “if you have to ask, you can’t afford it” range.
There’s no doubt that the newly-launched Leica LUX grip for iPhone ticks the beautiful box – but also the Leica pricing one …
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Consumer electronics from China are getting more expensive for both consumers and businesses, as Trump’s 10% import tariffs take effect. Additionally, removal of a small-value exemption on existing tariffs means some products are now subject to import taxes as high as 45%.
Courier companies are also applying their own collection fees on top of the tariffs, further increasing costs – and some companies are pausing imports while they figure out what to do …
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Reddit banned more than 90 subreddits yesterday, later restoring them and blaming it on a bug, but some moderators are worried about what the move might signal for the future.
The banned subreddits were all ones allowing NSFW content, but while that is commonly thought of as adult entertainment, it also includes communities as diverse as r/cubancigars and r/transgender_surgeries …
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A new conversational Alexa is expected to be revealed at an Amazon media event on February 26, with press invitations sent out yesterday.
A report citing Amazon insiders says that the all-new Alexa will be powered by generative AI, dramatically boosting its capabilities and putting even more pressure on Apple to launch a smarter Siri …
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Update: SuperDuper developer Dave Nanian reports that Apple has fixed the issue in macOS 15.3.
One or more backup bugs in macOS 15.2 Sequoia is affecting Apple’s own Time Machine utility, as well as third-party apps SuperDuper and CarbonCopyCloner. Initially the problem appeared to affect bootable backups only, but it now appears that it is either more general than this, or there is more than one bug affecting Mac backups …
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So-called macOS Stealers – malware that seeks to extract personal data like passwords and credit card numbers from your machine – is expected to be significantly more prevalent this year.
A new annual report on the state of malware says that Mac owners could be at almost as much risk as Windows PC users this year …
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We’re expecting to see an M5 chip powering this year’s MacBook Pro, iPad Pro, and Vision Pro. That chip has now entered mass production, according to a new supply-chain report.
Not much is known about it for sure, though it is expected to have enhanced AI performance, and it’s also been suggested that it may have a somewhat different design to previous M-series chips …
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Most Apple products sold in the US could see price raises, after Trump imposed 10% import tariffs on all imports from China. While Apple has been working on diversifying its supply chain, the majority of its products are still assembled in China.
Trump did a similar thing in his first term, applying tariffs to thousands of products. That time, Apple was successful in lobbying for exceptions, but the new policy appears to be a blanket 10% across all products arriving from China …
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China is considering opening an antitrust investigation into Apple’s App Store commissions, mirroring those already carried out in the US, EU, and elsewhere.
However, it’s likely that the Chinese government is simply raising the possibility as a form of leverage in the latest trade war instigated by the Trump administration …
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After I commented on the ASUS Zenbook A14 not only emulating the look of the MacBook Air, but exceeding its specs in several respects, I got the chance to spend some time using the machine.
While I’m certainly not going to be making the switch from macOS to Windows, there are a few things I’d love to see Apple replicate in future MacBooks …
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Adobe’s Acrobat AI assistant has long had the ability to summarize documents for you, but it now claims to be able to help you make sense of contracts – and catch discrepancies between them …
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A Grubhub security breach has exposed personal data for both customers and drivers, says the company, after an “incident” involving a third-party contractor.
The company has not revealed the exact scale of the security fail, but has admitted that the personal data includes names, email addresses, phone numbers, and partial credit card numbers …
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Spotify achieved its first full year of profitability since launching in 2008. The company has previously had occasional profitable quarters, but consistently lost money each year.
Apple may have played a role in the company’s turnaround, thanks to a change introduced last year …
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A Meta policy document describes the company’s fears that it could accidentally develop an AI model which would lead to “catastrophic outcomes.” It describes its plans to prevent the release of such models, but admits that it may not be able to do so.
Among the capabilities the company most fears are an AI system that could break through the security of even the best-protected corporate or government computer network without human assistance …
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An upcoming book Apple in China promises to tell the story of how a seemingly smart idea back in 1996 now leaves the company hostage to the whims of an authoritarian regime.
Subtitled “the capture of the world’s greatest company,” the book features interviews with more than 200 former Apple execs and engineers, and says it acts as both a historical account and a cautionary tale …
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New Orleans music students attending the Ellis Marsalis Center for Music (EMCM) are required to learn coding as part of their curriculum, as part of a collaboration with Apple.
Another mandatory course at the music school – no matter which primary instrument students have chosen to learn – is piano …
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Apple is benefiting from a new tax break in India, which will make it cheaper to assemble iPhones in the country. The change was announced by the government on Saturday.
We first learned about the plans last month, which are expected to be worth at least $2.7B in benefits to companies like Apple and Samsung …
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A zero-click WhatsApp spyware attack was made against 90 journalists and other “civil society members,” said Meta, which managed to detect the incident.
A zero-click attack means that victims don’t need to tap on a link or take any action in order for their devices to be compromised – simply receiving the message is enough …
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If you’re using the Microsoft Defender VPN on Mac or iPhone as part of your Microsoft 365 subscription, there’s bad news. The company has revealed in a support document that the privacy feature will cease to work at the end of this month …
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If you own an iPhone 11 or later, it includes some tech which does very little right now but is set to quickly become an extremely useful feature: Ultra Wideband (UWB).
Smart door locks incorporating UWB tech are now starting to hit the market, and these will offer the most convenient and secure unlocking experiences of all …
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Tests by security researchers revealed that DeepSeek failed literally every single safeguard requirement for a generative AI system, being fooled by even the most basic of jailbreak techniques.
This means that it can trivially be tricked into answering queries that should be blocked, from bomb recipes to guidance on hacking government databases …
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Over the weekend, Apple announced that it is making Swift Build open source. This is the build engine used by both Xcode and for the company’s internal projects.
Apple has also made a tiny name change to Swift Playgrounds, the app that helps people learn to code in Swift on iPad and Mac …
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