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.
I’m fairly firmly convinced that people who don’t keep their iPhone in a case are from an entirely different species to me. While I don’t make a habit of dropping mine, I don’t think there has been a year in which I haven’t dropped or knocked it against something at least once.
For me, then, an iPhone case falls into the category of a necessity rather than a luxury – but that doesn’t mean I don’t appreciate a luxurious look and feel …
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M4 MacBook Pro reviews mostly endorsed my own view that, while the machine would make a great purchase for Intel MBP owners, there isn’t a compelling reason for any M-series user to upgrade.
However, it turns out that Apple quietly gave the latest MacBook Pro a new display tech, offering two benefits …
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Back in 2020, Apple admitted that some AirPods Pro units suffered from both crackling sounds, and faults in the Active Noise Cancellation feature. The company launched a recall program which allowed customers to return their AirPods and have them replaced.
Apple said that only models made before October 2020 were affected, but a new AirPods Pro lawsuit claims this isn’t true – and says the company’s own actions confirm this …
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Some six years after virtual private network company NordVPN started searching data breaches for the most-used passwords, things are every bit as bad as when the company started.
Each year, the company searches the dark web for passwords stolen by malware or exposed in security breaches to determine the most commonly-used passwords, and this year’s crop is as depressing as ever …
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Snapchat is rolling out a new feature which will work in a similar way to Apple’s Find My app, but will be limited to family members.
Parents will be able to request the location of the teens, and vice-versa, with some automated location reporting also available …
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TSMC’s Arizona plants will enable Apple chips for older devices to be made in the US for the first time, but things haven’t exactly been going to plan.
The latest development is that a group of the company’s US workers have filed a lawsuit accusing the Taiwanese company of ‘anti-American discrimination’ …
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Earlier this week Ming-Chi Kuo suggested that we’ll see an Apple smart home camera in 2026, with the company confident it will prove to be a popular accessory, selling in the tens of millions per year.
Given Apple’s habit of minimizing the number of products it makes, if the report is accurate the company must feel there’s good reason to enter a crowded product category, and I think an Apple camera will likely differentiate itself in two ways: privacy, and Apple Intelligence …
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Shazam was once so ubiquitous that it was a verb, but since Apple’s acquisition and rebranding of the feature as Music Recognition, you don’t even need to have the Shazam app installed any more.
Apple has continued to improve the feature, and as of the iOS 18.2 beta, it can now tell you where you were when you heard a song …
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Apple first launched its Health Records feature way back in 2018, to provide a unified view of our own health records.
Recent complications following surgery really showed how valuable this could be if universally adopted, not just for us as patients, but also to assist healthcare providers in delivering the best standard of care …
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A Bloomberg report yesterday suggested that Apple is working on a wall-mounted smart display panel to act as “a command center for the home” – and that it could launch as early as March of next year.
I effectively trialled this concept back in 2019, wall-mounting an old iPad Air to serve as a dedicated smart home control panel, and reactions to that were enough to convince me that the upcoming new product is likely to be a winner …
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The new M4 MacBook Pro is a beast, offering a phenomenal combination of performance and battery-life, with the bonus of a Center Stage camera and the option of a nano-texture display.
But I have to say that I’m not remotely tempted because, honestly, my 2021 M1 Max MacBook Pro still feels to me like a brand-new machine – and that phenomenon could be an issue for Apple going forward …
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Apple CEO Tim Cook has announced that the company will be making a donation to assist with relief efforts after deadly flash floods in Valencia, Spain.
At least 95 people are known to have been killed so far, and that number is likely to rise as an unknown number of people remain unaccounted for …
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While we were very confident beforehand that we wouldn’t be seeing a larger iMac this week, there are still plenty of people waiting impatiently for at least a new 27-inch iMac. Many are hoping for 30-inch, 32-inch, or even bigger.
But while I do still think that’s in the works, the launch of the M4 Mac mini relieves a lot of the time pressure, for a couple of reasons …
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A report from Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman suggests that Apple’s upcoming smart home display might bear more than a passing resemblance to one of the most iconic Macintosh models, the iMac G4.
This is something I suggested might happen back in the summer, though personally I was hoping for a magnetic attachment for an iPad …
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Instagram head Adam Mosseri has admitted that the company may reduce the quality of your video if it thinks it’s not getting enough views …
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If you had a Cash App account between August 2018 and August 2024, you could be eligible to claim up to $2,575 in compensation for a data breach – but only if you submit your claim quickly …
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The $250 (yep, there’s no missing ‘M’ from the end of that number) Apple was awarded in its patent infringement case against Masimo might seem amusing – as John Gruber wryly noted, it’s just about enough to buy one Apple Watch SE.
But what was even more amusing is than neither Apple not Masimo could admit what the case was really about for the respective parties …
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Apple may be pitching Apple Intelligence as a key reason to upgrade to the iPhone 16, but it seems that most smartphone buyers are far more interested in the basics – like battery life.
A survey found that only a relatively small minority of consumers are currently using AI features on their smartphones, and it doesn’t yet seem to be a purchase driver …
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Apple marketing VP Greg Joswiak yesterday revealed that we can expect an exciting week of Mac announcements, starting on Monday morning.
The tweet also effectively confirmed that there will be no Mac event, just press releases and small-scale briefings for select media reps and creators …
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A UnitedHealth hack exposed the personal information and health data of more than 100M Americans – the first time the company has put a specific number on the security breach.
A ransomware attack was made on Change Healthcare back in February, but it was only yesterday that the company revealed its “unprecedented magnitude” …
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In most cases, you’d expect a shiny new Apple device to be worth less than you paid as soon as you walk out of the store, at least once you’re past the 14-day return period. You’d also expect companies buying in bulk to pay significantly less than retail.
But one of the biggest resellers in the business tells us that neither of these things is true, and that it is currently selling bulk lots of the iPhone 16 for above retail …
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The Snapchat camera will soon be available from the iPhone Lock Screen thanks to the iOS 18 feature letting you swap out the standard Camera app and flashlight for apps or shortcut actions of your choice …
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A new supply-chain report notes that the Apple Watch Series 10 advanced display technology is expected to be adopted in future iPhones.
Apple’s trickle-down approach means that the Apple Watch always gets the most advanced display tech first before it later rolls out to other devices, and the S10 tech is likely to be later used for iPhones – but not next year …
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While the narrative around Apple Intelligence is that the company is leaning heavily on “coming later” asterisks, and we’ll have to wait a long time for any of it to actually launch, yesterday’s iOS 18.2 beta release tells a somewhat different story.
Now, sure, we have to include an asterisk of our own here – just because a feature is available in the current beta doesn’t mean it’ll make it into the release version in December – but it’s still a good pointer to the intended pace of the Apple Intelligence rollout …
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