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iFixit helps both the handy and the hopeless mend their broken stuff as part of a broader mission to fight waste.
In 2003, Kyle Wiens and Luke Soules were students at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, and they had a problem: a busted iBook laptop. Make that two problems: They also had no money. They couldn’t find any manuals or instructions on how to fix the thing, so they did what any guys majoring in computer science (Kyle) and industrial engineering (Luke) would — they cracked it open and tinkered until it was working again.
That experience gave them an idea for a business, so they started buying broken computers on eBay, and harvesting parts to sell so others could repair machines cheaply (computer parts were expensive and/or difficult to find). They also posted videos on how to fix computers, and iFixit was born.
The frustrating experience of being unable to fix something that should be fixable spawned not just a business but a consumer movement (right to repair), a battle against our wasteful throwaway economy (e-waste especially), and a war against companies that don’t want you to fix their products.
Fix It With iFixit
iFixit bills itself as a “global repair community,” and the philosophy on their website is simple: “Never take broken for an answer” and “No one knows how to fix everything, but everyone knows how to fix something.” As a community, while iFixit employees post many of the repair guides and “teardowns” (videos where they take apart gadgets to gauge the quality and repairability), anyone can submit a repair guide, write a story about a successful repair, or ask a question of 2.5 million fixers.
Because iFixit started in the tech world, its guides and videos are heavily tilted to electronics, but they also cover vehicles, appliances, and even clothes — basically, anything that an iFixit member wants to show us how to fix. For many types of repairs, there are probably better videos on specialist websites (the iFixit section on bicycle repair, for example, is a bit of a hodge-podge), but iFixit is a great place to start for just about any item in your life that’s not working.
But iFixit doesn’t stop with how-to info. They have an online store, selling parts and tools for electronics repairs. They’ve also partnered with 98 colleges and universities with the iFixit Technical Writing Project (founder Wiens is a notorious grammar stickler) that’s taught good writing habits to 28,000 students, many of whom now contribute to the site. They work with companies who want to make their products more fixable, and also with companies that want to create repair manuals and train their workers.
iFixit also has an entertaining and informative blog that includes information and reviews on the latest tech and right-to-repair news. They pull no punches. In an article about why wireless phone charging wastes electricity and can harm devices, staff writer Shahram Mokhtari opines, “Tesla’s Wireless Charging Platform deserves special mention for their dumpster fire of a design. This charger has the singular honor of being ludicrously power hungry when not being used and absurdly inefficient no matter how you place your phone on the stand.”
Right-to-Repair: Who Really Owns Your Phone? Or Your Tractor?
If you’ve tried to get your iPhone screen repaired recently, you may have found that the mom-and-pop repair places have a lot more trouble with this once-simple repair than they used to. The culprit is “parts pairing,” where software in your phone ensures that even an identical, genuine Apple part may not work with your iPhone unless installed by an authorized Apple tech. Apple claims that it’s set it up this way to protect the security and quality of your phone. But it’s also lucrative for Apple, as repairs at an Apple store generally cost much more than at an independent shop. And if the repair is expensive, maybe you’ll just decide to buy a new iPhone.
Apple isn’t alone in this behavior (though they did petulantly yank the iFixit app from the App Store in 2015). Samsung is also notoriously fixer unfriendly, to the point where iFixit ended a partnership with them. John Deere, the farm equipment manufacturer, took control of stuff they’ve sold to a nauseating level. They’ve withheld repair manuals, tools, and critical software from farmers and independent repair techs. John Deere even asserted that due to proprietary software embedded in the tractor, farmers don’t actually own the equipment they buy, but merely receive “an implied license for the life of the vehicle to operate the vehicle.”
iFixit is one of the leaders fighting this type of corporate skullduggery, to the point where they helped found The Repair Association (co-founder Wiens is the President) to battle for the right-to-repair. And they’ve been successful: five states, including California and New York, have passed right-to-repair laws, and over two dozen more have such laws under consideration.
A lawsuit from politically powerful farmers jolted John Deere back to reality, but many right-to-repair advocates accuse John Deere and many other companies of “malicious compliance,” where companies comply with the letter of right-to-repair laws, but ensure that the reality of repair is frustrating and/or infeasible.
Elizabeth Chamberlain, iFixit’s Director of Sustainability, notes, “we’ve found repair monopolies all over the place — almost every industry has some version of this problem. In refrigerators, GE funnels repairs through their expensive SmartHQ subscription system. In commercial kitchen equipment, the worst repair monopoly is Taylor, the company that makes McDonald’s ice cream machines. Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo have successfully lobbied to keep game consoles out of Right to Repair laws.”
On the other side, Elizabeth says, “There are definitely some companies that are doing the right thing. We’ve given 10/10 repairability scores to just one smartphone manufacturer, Fairphone, and just one laptop manufacturer, Framework.”
But smaller companies aren’t the only ones making changes, according to Elizabeth. “We’ve seen some real growth even in major brands — we worked with Lenovo on the latest design for the ThinkPad T14, and we’re so impressed by how repairable they’ve made that machine.”
Reduce, Reuse, REPAIR, Recycle
The stakes in this battle over repairing your gizmos are higher than just the desire of big companies to capture every last nickel. E-waste alone is a massive, global environmental problem, packed with both toxic chemicals and potentially recyclable materials. If we add in the environmental impacts of discarded appliances, vehicles, clothes, and basically any item that might have extra life with a little effort, we encounter a mountain of squandered resources that contributes to every environmental problem we face.
Apple’s “free” recycling program is an excellent case study as to why recycling should be a last resort, and why repair is preferable. Over 80% of your phone’s carbon footprint is from manufacturing (the rest is charging and disposal), but Apple is more than happy to take your old, repairable iPhone, shred it, recover the valuable minerals therein, and sell you a new one. Apple even sued one of its recyclers whose employees were stealing easily refurbished old iPhones and Apple Watches to sell themselves, plainly contradicting its public claims about sustainability. Meanwhile, according to the UN, less than a quarter of e-waste is recycled in an “environmentally sound manner,” and the e-waste problem amounts to a $37 billion global annual cost to human health and the environment.
Not only does fixing things improve the environment, but it makes economic sense for both the individual and the economy as a whole. Repairing things at scale saves money for consumers and creates jobs locally.
“There are big environmental benefits” to repairing products, says Elizabeth from iFixit. “After shareholders demanded that Microsoft investigate the environmental consequences of repair, Microsoft found that repairing instead of replacing devices decreased waste and greenhouse gas emissions by 92%. As companies around the world are working to address the climate crisis and decrease their greenhouse gas emissions, supporting repair programs can be a huge boon.”
And some manufacturers are seeing the value of repairability, making it a part of their brand and business model, to build customer loyalty and create new revenue streams. “Repair makes customers more loyal. We’ve found as much in our own work. Neiman Marcus found that customers who use their repair services were 73% more likely to make a purchase in the next year than baseline,” Elizabeth says. “Plus, enabling DIY repair can reduce the cost of the rest of the service network — when customers are doing repairs themselves, it decreases the burden on authorized repair centers,” she adds.
Not only does fixing things improve the environment, but it also makes economic sense for both the individual and the economy as a whole. Repairing things at scale saves money for consumers and creates jobs locally (whereas most electronic manufacturing jobs are not in the US). “Local independent repair shops are super important to keeping our economy going. When people need their equipment working, they need it now, whether it’s a computer or a tractor. They often can’t wait weeks or months for a manufacturer to send out a technician,” Elizabeth says.
Fix It First
Not everyone is a born tinkerer. But the next time something you have stops working, instead of chucking it in the garbage and buying a new one, consider trying to fix it. iFixit is a great resource, but there are literally millions of YouTube videos out there designed to help you save both money and resources. Bluedot even has our own Mr. Fix-It to help you with some key repairs around your home. Give it a shot: you may save yourself some money, while also saving all the resources that went into the item in the first place.
