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.
When Amazon announced a wider rollout of a surveillance feature to help Ring smart doorbells locate lost dogs, it was immediately seen as a precursor to using the feature to identify people.
That the company did in fact plan to do this has now been confirmed by a leaked email which Ring has admitted is genuine …
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Apple commenter John Gruber is spitballing again. After suggesting that the special event on March 4 may be preceded by a series of new product announcements through press releases, he now has another idea.
Based on a reader drawing his attention to the timing, he suggests that another announcement could be immersive F1 viewing on Vision Pro …
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An unsecured database that likely contains tens of millions of unique Social Security numbers, alongside email addresses and passwords, has been discovered by security researchers.
While the database appears to have been collated from a number of separate data breaches over approximately a decade, the researchers explain why even very old personal data remains a live threat …
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Badged versions of TP-Link routers are supplied to US customers by more than 300 ISPs, making them the most widely used Wi-Fi routers in the country, found in millions of US homes.
It therefore caused grave concern when security researchers at Microsoft found that a hacking group based in China was using vulnerabilities in the devices to carry out cyber attacks in the US. It had been widely expected that the routers would be banned from sale in the US, but politics seemingly intervened. However, the battle is not yet over …
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Apple’s low-cost MacBook has been a long time coming, but it now seems clear that we can expect it to be launched in the first week of March.
Apple has a special event taking place on March 4, but a subsequent report says that this will not include a keynote presentation. Instead, it says we can expect a series of press releases along the lines of the ones we saw back in 2024 …
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Apple previously accused Qualcomm of “double-dipping” as a result of the company’s policies over selling radio chips for use in iPhones. The Cupertino company had also objected to Qualcomm charging a percentage of the price of an iPhone rather than a fixed fee per chip.
Apple withdrew its claims back in 2024, but an independent class-action lawsuit was still being pursued on behalf of iPhone owners. This lawsuit has now been abandoned …
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The Rode Wireless Micro introduced a feature called Direct Connect, which allows the wireless microphones to pair directly with an iPhone via Bluetooth without the need for a receiver. This same feature is now coming to Wireless Pro and Wireless Go users thanks to a firmware update …
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For me iPhone Mirroring has been one of the most useful enhancements to the Apple ecosystem in recent years, and is something I use on a daily basis.
However, while I completely understand Apple’s focus on privacy protection, for my usage the way it works at present is simply annoying …
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Excessive use of in-ear headphones like AirPods can result in hearing damage and ear infections, warn audiologists.
They recommend a simple guideline to reduce the risks of noise-induced hearing loss, tinnitus, and sound sensitivity – known as the 60/60 rule …
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The EU has opened its own investigation into the Grok chatbot generating child sexual abuse material. It’s estimated that Grok generated 23,000 CSAM images in just 11 days. Update: A second investigation has been opened in Ireland, focusing on possible privacy violations.
Despite multiple calls for Apple and Google to temporarily remove both X and Grok from the App Store, neither company has yet done so …
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A Best Buy worker has been charged with fraud after he allegedly used his manager’s override code to give himself discounts of up to 99% on MacBook Pro models and other high-value electronics.
Police say the total value of the products “purchased” by the employee and his associates was more than $118,000 …
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Amazon’s plan to turn Ring doorbells into a neighborhood-wide surveillance system was roundly denounced as dystopian even when it was just searching for lost dogs.
The company does at least seem to have learned from the privacy backlash, announcing that it has now abandoned plans for a partnership with police …
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The long-awaited low-cost MacBook powered by an A18 Pro chip is now expected to launch on March 4. It will reportedly be priced somewhere around $700, making it significantly cheaper than an entry-level MacBook Air.
Given that the upcoming machine is likely to meet the needs of a great many of those who currently opt for the MacBook Air, it could cannibalize a lot of sales. One possible solution to this is to use the strategy Apple once adopted with the iBook and Powerbook lineups …
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Samsung has introduced a new privacy feature to its Galaxy S26 Ultra smartphone, and a new report suggests that future MacBooks may adopt the same technology.
If so, it will be rather ironic as MacBooks were among the earliest laptops to benefit from a feature which can now sometimes be considered a bug …
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When the first rumors of a folding iPhone emerged, we didn’t know which of the two possible formats Apple was planning: an iPhone Fold or an iPhone Flip.
It later became clear that what we’re expecting to be launched first is a book-style iPhone Fold. However, there are signs that we may get both …
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I’m just about starting to believe that I may be heading into the final stages of an extremely lengthy attempt to sell one apartment and buy another, so I’m currently giving some thought to the smart home technology I’ll want in my new home.
This will be some 13 years after I first adopted smart home tech, so I’m expecting to make a few changes – some small, one potentially much larger …
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Anthropic has just launched significant new features to Claude’s free tier. Connecting to apps was previously a pro feature available only to paid subscribers, but this is now included in the free tier.
Claude can connect to a wide range of apps, including Canva, Figma, Monday, Notion, Slack, Square, Wix, WordPress, and Google Workspace apps …
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Domestic robots have been a fixture in science fiction novels for more than a century, but in the real world we’re still all doing our own domestic chores barring vacuuming.
While a number of companies are working on humanoid robots, with Apple reportedly among them, all we’ve really had so far are promises and extremely limited demos. But you can (maybe) buy a laundry-folding robot today for $8,000 or rent it for $450 a month …
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Both WhatsApp and Telegram have been blocked in Russia as the government tries to force people to use its unencrypted WeChat clone, Max. All messages sent and received in Max can be read by the government.
The government also blocked access to Facebook and Instagram, and designated parent company Meta as “an extremist organization” …
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When Apple launched the Apple Creator Studio (ACS) subscription, the company indicated that you could use the AI features to produce 50 Keynote presentations per month “as a minimum.” However, developer and security researcher Steve Troughton-Smith had a very different experience when it came to AI usage limits.
He reported that far from being able to produce 50 presentations, a single Keynote slideshow used half of his monthly ACS limit, so the limit would be just two …
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A number of major tech companies have agreed to submit to independent grading of the mental health impacts of using their apps. Platforms on board at the launch of the Safe Online Standards initiative include Discord, YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, Pinterest, Roblox, and Twitch …
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Amazon apparently thought the world would respond with a collective “awww” when it announced an expansion of its Ring Search Party feature to help find lost dogs, promoted via a 30-second Super Bowl ad (below). Instead, it’s being widely panned as a dystopian move in the current climate.
Since the company has recently rolled out a facial recognition capability for the Ring video doorbell, people drew the obvious and exceedingly short line between surveilling for dogs to surveilling for people …
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Apple is believed to be on a gradual journey that began with Emergency SOS via Satellite on the iPhone 14 back in 2022 and will at some point progress to full 5G access via satellite, bypassing ground-based antenna altogether.
It’s previously been suggested that the iPhone 18 Pro might take a significant step in this direction with support for 5G over satellite links. A new report today adds weight to that idea …
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The mysterious AI hardware device designed by Jony Ive for OpenAI has been delayed, according to a new court filing. It had originally been scheduled to launch later this year but now won’t ship any earlier than February 2027.
The same court paperwork also reveals that the company is no longer planning to use the name io for the upcoming device …
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