How to Fix Everything

What do an iPhone, a tractor, and a printer have in common? They're all made by manufacturers who don't want you to repair those devices yourself.

I resolved that I wasn't going to make a habit out of reblogging or resharing, instead using this site as a platform for my own original content. But Vice:Motherboard's recent profile of iFixit is just too good not to share, especially in light of the article I posted on Monday, encouraging you to install more RAM into your older Macs.

For those who don't know, over the last decade, Apple has increasingly become a company bent on obfuscating the means, tools, and processes for taking apart and repair their devices. Anyone who lives in a major city knows that there's a whole cottage industry around town devoted to repairing broken iPhones and Androids. Companies like Apple, Samsung, and John Deere have resorted to all manner of dirty tricks to keep people from fixing their products: proprietary screws, excess glue, even customs crackdowns and DMCA lawsuits.

I've used iFixit's excellent guides on numerous occasions over the years to repair or upgrade my Apple devices. Kyle Wiens and iFixit explain how they use ingenuity and curiosity to stay a step ahead of Apple's efforts to stifle them. They extoll that we should live in a world where people are educated on the means to fix things. The alternative is a futuristic dystopia filled with artifacts whose inner workings are magical to us, and which are discarded as soon as they cease functioning for any reason.

Motherboard: How to Fix Everything

Jesse Schooff