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.
Your live WhatsApp messages and backups are both protected by end-to-end encryption, but so far you’ve only had the option of using a passkey to access your messages. Accessing backups required a password instead.
That’s all changing now as the company is in the process of rolling out passkey support for backups …
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Today isn’t a great day for users of Meta apps. Mark Zuckerberg has told us to expect a “huge corpus” of AI content in Facebook and Instagram, while the company’s CFO Susan Li has said that ads in Threads are now running globally and that video ads are on the way …
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Security-conscious readers probably already use the data breach alert site Have I Been Pwned, but a new Proton website is aiming to alert you at an earlier stage with what the company says will be near real-time reporting.
The company behind ProtonMail says it has launched the Data Breach Observatory because it can sometimes take too long to find out when your personal data has been made available for sale on the dark web …
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Apple and/or its customers were facing billions of dollars a year in additional costs after increases to US tariffs on Chinese imports imposed by the Trump administration earlier this year. The company had initially absorbed these costs, but it was unclear how long that might last, with future price rises seeming likely.
There’s some good news today, however, with Trump halving the additional tariffs imposed after meeting with China’s President Xi. Additional tariff increases that were scheduled to come into effect shortly have also been suspended …
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The AI writing aid Grammarly is changing its name to Superhuman (not to be confused with SimpleHuman) as it gains additional capabilities. The company says existing subscribers will get the extra features at no extra cost, but only until the beginning of February …
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A new report by a corporate watchdog says that Apple spent €7M ($8.1M) lobbying the EU in the past year, making it the joint second-largest spender in the tech sector. It says tech giants now spend more on EU lobbying than Big Pharma and the automotive industries combined.
It also reveals that Apple held a total of 76 meetings with Members of the European Parliament and high-level European Commission staff …
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A mother with court-ordered custody of her children has described how Apple’s Family Sharing feature can be weaponized by a former partner.
Apple support staff were unable to assist her when she reported her former partner using the service in controlling and coercive ways …
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A bipartisan bill could lead to teams being banned from using AI chatbots, in response to parents expressing concerns about inappropriate content ranging from sexual conversations to assistance with suicide planning.
If the proposed GUARD Act becomes law, then it could impact Apple in three different ways – including the company’s plans for the new Siri …
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One of the key compromises with the iPhone Air is a smaller battery, but a combination of real-life usage and lab tests suggests that it will get you through a typical day.
In one lab stress test, for example, where the phone is used with the screen on maximum brightness for three hours of video streaming, the iPhone Air dropped 15% of battery life – which is the same as the iPhone 15 …
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A new report says that Apple is expecting to announce annual Service revenues of well over $100 billion during its earnings report later this week.
If accurate, that would make the company’s Services division a bigger business than either Walt Disney or Tesla …
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We learned back at WWDC25 that US passport support would be coming to Apple Wallet. It hasn’t yet arrived in iOS 26, but the company yesterday confirmed that it is on the way.
An update to the Apple website last month told us to expect it by the end of the year, and Apple’s VP of Apple Pay and Apple Wallet, Jennifer Bailey, confirmed in a conference keynote that it is still happening …
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The European Union has found that both Meta and TikTok failed to properly protect children, including making it difficult to report the presence of child sexual abuse material (CSAM) in their apps.
Separately, Meta has faced a setback in its defense of lawsuits filed by multiple US states, accusing the company of deliberately making its apps addictive despite knowing they were harmful to teenagers …
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The Neato cloud server needed to keep the shuttered company’s robot vacuum cleaners running is being closed down three years earlier than promised, turning the smart devices into dumb ones.
The parent company had initially promised that the MyNeato app would continue working until 2028, but has now backtracked on this and is ceasing support before the end of this year. It’s a further reminder of the importance of sticking to smart products with either HomeKit or Matter support …
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A leaker with a good track record on iPhone camera matters has backed earlier reports that the iPhone 18 Pro will get a variable aperture lens, something not yet seen in an iPhone.
It’s not yet clear whether both the iPhone 18 Pro and Pro Max will get the upcoming feature, or whether it will be exclusive to the latter …
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The social network formerly known as Twitter has very quietly revealed that the twitter.com domain is set to be “retired.”
As a first step, the company is requiring anyone who uses a hardware security key or passkey to re-enroll within two weeks, otherwise it will cease to work …
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I recently shared my top ten list of Apple and non-Apple tech. This time I’m following up with some of my favorite third-party apps for iPhone and Mac.
In putting this piece together, I realized that I don’t often use apps for entertainment. On iPhone and Mac alike, the vast majority of my choices perform a useful function …
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Meta is giving some people the opportunity to choose one of six new Instagram app icons, but most of us won’t be able to use them …
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I’d really like the concept of an iPhone Fold. I love the idea of carrying something that’s an iPhone in my pocket but an iPad mini in use.
We’re of course expecting the device to be very expensive, but I could see it being worth the cost. There are, however, two (or three, depending on how you count them) reasons why it might not be the right phone for me after all …
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A firm of analysts are predicting that Apple will skip the iPhone 19 name in favor of jumping directly to the iPhone 20 in 2027.
Omdia believes the company will do this in order to mark the 20th anniversary of the iPhone, but it just reinforces my view that it’s time for Apple to drop the numbers altogether …
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Tinder face verification is becoming mandatory for all new US users, starting this week in California and gradually rolling out to other states. The Face Check feature is already in use in six other countries, including Canada.
When you first open the app, you will be asked to carry out a moving face scan similar to that used when setting up Face ID …
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Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak is one of more than a thousand public figures to call for an interim ban on the development of AI superintelligence. Other signatories include Nobel laureates, AI pioneers, and other tech luminaries …
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While there are some who view Vision Pro as a solution in search of a problem, there are at least as many of us who are very attracted to the idea but deterred by the price and comfort issues. I’ve said that if Apple could produce a lighter Vision Air model at $2,000 or less, I would likely find it hard to resist.
Samsung’s Galaxy XR headset has just demonstrated that this is a very realistic prospect. The specs are impressively close to those of Vision Pro, but it’s gone on sale at just $1,800 …
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Back in the summer, Adobe launched the Indigo camera app in response to complaints about the artificial look of typical smartphone photos, including those from Apple’s stock Camera app. Indigo uses far less aggressive processing in order to give a more natural look, with users saying the results look more like those from a DSLR.
However, weeks after the launch of the iPhone 17, the latest iPhone models still don’t support the app. Adobe has now briefly explained the reason why, and how the company plans to proceed …
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There’s been a lot of doubt about the number of iPhone Air orders being placed by customers, given that delivery times have never slipped between launch and today..
A Nikkei report today adds fuel to the fire, suggesting that Apple has slashed its own orders to suppliers to levels normally only seen as a product winds down to the end of production …
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