History of iFixit’s Community

RV_ · July 7, 2023

I have been getting the newsletters from these guys for a few years. I do still build some systems for me. Might be interesting to some folks. They broke the story that Surface devices were getting user upgradeable SSDs and I did.

Here's their story. Great resource and free!

Excerpt:

"A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away…

Just kidding. Actually, it was more like the early 2000s and it happened in Yosemite Hall Tower 1 at Cal Poly.

Kyle and Luke were frustrated by the lack of repair information available online.

Kyle’s Apple G3 iBook was broken and they had no idea how to even diagnose the problem because Apple didn’t include repair documentation with the device. Even when they were able to get some information on how to fix the laptop, Apple was already one step ahead issuing take-down notices.

So even if you could get your hands on the information, chances were, it wouldn’t be available for long. So fixing your stuff could leave you in big trouble.

Can you imagine starting a repair and only being able to get part way through because you lost access to the remaining steps?

Although they pushed through and figured out how to fix it without any official documentation, they found themselves thinking about all the other people who had ever found themselves in a similar situation.

They also grew concerned over the idea that paying for something didn’t mean that you actually owned it.

At $1,600 a pop (not including taxes) and now worth $2,637.94 in today’s market, the G3 was quite an investment, you’d think you’d be able to crack it open and fix it if something went wrong.

And while the G3 is discontinued, the regular practice of restricting access to repair documentation has not.

This spurred an internal drive for Kyle and Luke to share their experience and encourage others to fix their own stuff. "