Fixer. Right to repair advocate. iFixit CEO. @kwiens@mastodon.world
Chattanooga, TN
- Tweets 17,675
- Following 1,845
- Followers 14,919
- Likes 11,005
Sick Codes has jailbroken a John Deere, and this is just the beginning. Turns out our entire food system is built on outdated, unpatched Linux and Windows CE hardware with LTE modems.
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Hey @AnthropicAI: I get you're hungry for data. Claude is really smart! But do you really need to hit our servers a million times in 24 hours?
You're not only taking our content without paying, you're tying up our devops resources. Not cool.
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John Deere has repeatedly told regulators that farmers can't be trusted to repair their own equipment. This foundational work will pave the path for farmers to retake control of the equipment that they own. #RightToRepair
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I am thrilled to announce our first electronic product, the Smart Soldering Iron. We've put a huge amount of thought and effort into crafting a soldering experience that's easy and safe for anyone to learn. It has a 100-Watt heater that's ready to solder in 5 seconds.
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And yes, that is corn-themed Doom running on a John Deere touchscreen. @sickcodes really went all out for this. You can harvest corn to raise your health or go hunt down the piggies!
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We took apart the Vision Pro, and it is a phenomenal feat of engineering! There is just so much packed in this headset. Some highlights:
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As we start to understand how John Deere built this, people are raising some very real concerns about GPL compliance. Deere has built a very profitable empire on the backs of open source software. Where are their contributions back to the community?
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Thanks to @ZacksJerryRig and @dbrand for raising this to our attention.
We spend a lot of money and time buying every gadget and taking it apart for all of you. Perhaps @Casetify will pitch in next time?
Dear @Casetify, using stolen X-rays of phone internals doesn't make you a tech genius; it makes you a copycat. How about investing some of those "cutting-edge" profits into supporting Right to Repair or wheelchair advocacy? Or is that too original for you?
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If any of those requests accessed our terms of service, they would have told you that use of our content expressly forbidden. But don't ask me, ask Claude!
If you want to have a conversation about licensing our content for commercial use, we're right here.
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The hard work to restore our Right to Repair is being championed by @RepairCoalition and @securepairs, and we could really use your help taking this to the next level.
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Let me share my life’s story and why Apple's repair announcement is a big deal to me. Way back in 2003, I was trying to fix my clamshell iBook and googled for the service manual. All I found was sites that had been removed because of a DMCA takedown. /thread
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I spent the last few days getting to know the materials Apple used in their MacBook keyboard. Because Apple doesn’t design these keyboards to be repaired, our analysis was destructive. A 2019 MacBook Pro died to bring you this information. /thread
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The Twitter hack has earned 12.17BTC so far, street value over $110k. blockchain.com/btc/address/b…
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Rumor has it that Apple will use a voltage-release adhesive for the battery of the next iPhone. Here's the adhesive in action. Apply 12 volts for 60 seconds and presto, your adhesive is debonded. Pretty cool!
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Oh we're way past that chatgpt.com/share/e52dc4dd-7…
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This Commodore 64 used by a small auto repair shop for balancing driveshafts has been working non-stop for 25 years sploid.gizmodo.com/this-old-…
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Huge news: after a decade of trying and an absolutely ridiculous amount of lobbying by John Deere to stop us, the world's first Right to repair law has passed 44-16 in Colorado. #RightToRepair
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Our TOS banned ML training before their crawl, afterwards we added them to robots.txt.
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iFixit is no longer working directly with Samsung to enable repair. We just couldn't make it work.
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I received a threatening letter from Steris, a medical device manufacturer unhappy that we are helping hospitals repair their equipment.
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It's interesting how the screw orientation is a dead giveaway. The exact orientation of all the screws in your gadgets are a unique fingerprint, if you measure exactly enough.
What a surprise, @Casetify’s old “Inside Parts” case was also copied directly from @iFixit
Lowering the resolution and adding contrast does not make you a "bastion of originality"
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My friend Eric was just sentenced to 15 months in jail for helping refurbishers reinstall Windows on their computers. washingtonpost.com/news/true…
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I have spent the last two months heads down working on a huge project with the assistance of 200 volunteer librarians. It has daunted, exhausted, intimidated, and inspired us.
I’m proud to launch iFixit’s Medical Device manual database:
ifixit.com/Device/Medical_De… /1
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So: thank you to the people at Apple that made this happen. Changing the course of a big ship isn't easy. apple.com/newsroom/2021/11/a…
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Apple’s announcement may seem like a small thing: they’re going to publish free manuals and sell parts to their customers. But it’s a total shift in perspective. It’s an agreement that this is a partnership. We’re on Starship Earth together cruising through the universe together.
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And that’s why this is so important. Fixing things is innately human: we make things and they break and we fix them. We are constantly at war with entropy, pushing back the forces of chaos a little bit at a time.
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This is just stunning. An active duty US Marine logistics officer just published an NYT op ed arguing that we need Right to Repair to protect our military. Manufacturers are preventing soldiers from fixing equipment themselves. nytimes.com/2019/11/20/opini…
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The amazing ag Doom mod complete with Corn Slaughtering Simulator 2000 is the work of the very talented @Skelegant.
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Apple was the first electronics manufacturer with open source, Creative Commons licensed manuals for every product they sold—because I did it for them. Since 2003, iFixit has systematically, painstakingly disassembled every new gadget. Every iPod. Every MacBook. Every iPhone.
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iFixit and @publicknowledge just legalized the repair of McDonald's ice cream machines. You're welcome!
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Right to Repair continues to be necessary for all the reasons that Apple made this announcement today. We need to shift to a society where fixing and maintaining things is the default, not the exception.
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We've just posted our look inside the iPhone 14, and it turns out that Apple has totally redesigned it to make it more repairable. ifixit.com/News/64865/iphone…
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I muddled my way through and fixed the computer, but it was harder than it should have been. I broke tabs and latches. And out of that frustration, I started iFixit to make sure no one had to suffer like I had.
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When the EyeSight displays your eyes, it isn’t just displaying a single video feed of your eyes; it’s showing a bunch of videos of your eyes. Exploring inside the glass shell, we found three layers for the front-facing display: a widening layer, a lenticular layer, and the OLED.
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We need fixers in leadership. Gov Walz signed one of the nation's first Right to Repair laws!
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Right to repair is about the idea that we are all in this together. Product owners and manufacturers need to collaborate to make the amazing products that we depend on last. Neither can do it alone.
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We have sweat and cursed and bled, reverse engineering the often-opaque repair process. One gadget after another, we published simple, easy to follow instructions. Our goal is to make repair so easy, maybe you prefer to fix something rather than buy new.
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The curved bubble shell is a real bear to get open. We're pretty good at this kind of thing, and still managed to (slightly) break the glass. I would love to see the manufacturing process for this complex shape!
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And @Tarah’s up now: As a cybersecurity expert, I can tell you that if taking your iPhone apart represents a serious security threat, we should be in an underground bunker instead of talking about this on public television.
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Our full teardown has a lot more insight, along with 360-rays from @CreativeElctrn ifixit.com/News/90137/vision…
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But there is hope! Today is a good day. Let's join together, push back entropy, and help other companies on this journey.
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Resources are scarce and they are precious. Making electronics requires a lot of energy and CO2 and the planet is getting warmer. It’s a huge amount of material and carbon and human toil to make an iPhone. Let’s make them last!
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Without doing Apple’s job for them, I can’t predict whether this change fixes the problem. It probably will help.
But would I buy this computer? No way. This design has lost all credibility. It’s time to go back to a tried-and true mechanism. Thinner is not better!
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With the glass off, we can start to see how the EyeSight system works. There's a curved OLED panel with a series of lenticular lenses.
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Apple wanted a lifelike, 3D view of your eyes, so they set up custom prisms to create the stereoscopic effect. It's hard to photograph what's going on, so here's a diagram.
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This one announcement doesn't undo years of harm that Apple's design practices, undermining of environmental standards, and cynical lobbying have done. The industry is on a dark path of obsolescence right now.
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This is a big deal: Apple is locking batteries to iPhones now. ifixit.com/News/apple-is-loc…
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Our response in conjunction with @EFF. It is imperative that we do everything in our power to assist our medical professionals right now. #COVID19 eff.org/deeplinks/2020/06/me…
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How Pebble’s watches have stuck around is a fascinating story. A crazy dedicated community reverse engineered their servers and set up their own infrastructure. The watches are still running strong, three years after the company failed. ifixit.com/News/rebble-with-…
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We’re calling it: Massachusetts Question One has passed with 75% of the popular vote. This will be the most advanced #RightToRepair law in the world, opening wireless automotive diagnostics and unleashing a world of possible apps. ifixit.com/News/46235/massac…
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Packed into an on-the-go tool roll, the Soldering Toolkit has everything you need to solder anywhere.
ifixit.com/News/99434/introd…
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Apple got away with faster-than-needed consumer upgrade cycles for a long time because they’d convinced people bad battery = new phone. That changed a year ago.
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Colorado just passed the world's first Right to Repair law for powered wheelchairs. This is absolutely huge for the disabled community, and an important precedent that could pave the way for other products. ifixit.com/News/60846/colora…
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Cool story! Perhaps cite your source for this? ifixit.com/News/11986/iphone…
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But it’s not enough—the community just can’t keep up. And some companies are starting to get that. Motorola and Patagonia and HTC and others have started to share, and that’s really exciting. ifixit.com/Motorola
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Sometimes, we miss something. Back in the day there was a MacBook with an upgradeable wireless card. iFixit’s instructions said, just take it out and put it back in. What we didn’t realize was that if you installed the card backwards, it fried the computer. Oops.
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We’re a wiki, and so our members quickly fixed the problem—but not until someone toasted their machine learning this The Hard Way. Apple’s internal service manual documented the problem, but we didn’t have access.
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It’s a joint responsibility, and for the last few decades too many manufacturers have been shirking theirs. They stopped selling parts. They sent lawyers after folks like Tim Hicks, an Australian kid who just wanted to share repair manuals with his friends ifixit.com/News/5668/using-c…
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Right to repair is now the law of the land in New York. More states are expected to follow. ifixit.com/News/70515/new-yo…
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Oh, and we gave it a 1 / 10 repair score, just like the last one. Those scores matter—that’s the reason independent shops aren’t able to help you fix your keyboard. That’s the reason this is so challenging for Apple to fix in stores. Modular hardware is resilient hardware.
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Going inside even further, you can see the second set of displays underneath. There is a massive amount of complexity in here, far more ribbon cables and connected sensors than in your phone.
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Our goal is to make soldering accessible to more people than ever before. With USB-C now able to support our powerful 100 Watt iron, we were able to create a battery Power Station with configurable controls. Or plug your iron directly into an AC adapter.
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We couldn't be more proud to be working with Valve to make sure the Steam Deck stands the test of time.
Today, we’re announcing that iFixit will be one of the authorized sellers of Steam Deck replacement parts.
store.steampowered.com/news/…
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But how does the lens actually work? Why I'm glad you asked! Good thing we had a trusty @Evident_LS microscope to see the physical structure of the lenticular lens. The effect is similar to those toy cards that change the image depending on your viewing angle.
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In a landmark vote, right to repair just overwhelmingly passed the New York Senate. It's hard to overstate how important and groundbreaking this is. #righttorepair
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Apple: Only we are qualified to repair your iPhone. Independent repair will undermine our security model.
Also Apple: our depot repair technicians are uploading your nudes to *your* facebook account. #righttorepair telegraph.co.uk/business/202…
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AirPods are super recyclable, Apple says. Nope—not unless the internals have been redesigned. No electronics recycler wants to deal with three tiny glued in batteries. 🔥
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Apple’s ‘new’ policy is required by law. Third party repairs *must* not void the warranty, per Magnuson-Moss @rsgnl macrumors.com/2017/02/24/thi…
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They did it! This is huge. In a unanimous 5-0 vote, the FTC just adopted a landmark policy supporting Right to Repair. ftc.gov/system/files/documen…
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Just an iron and a power supply isn't enough to solder, though: you need tools! Flush cutters, wire strippers, solder, wick. Most technicians have a whole workbench dedicated to this. But what if you could take the workbench with you? Presenting our Soldering Toolkit.
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Apple is releasing repair information and parts to consumers. ifixit.com/News/55370/apple-… This is huge—what we've been working towards for nearly 20 years.
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Apple has posted iPhone service manuals online, and that is a huge step. Kudos to them for getting this done. support.apple.com/manuals/re…
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Microsoft's new Surface Laptop is a radical change for the better. We've upgraded it a full five points, our largest repairability swing in history. ifixit.com/Teardown/Microsof…
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Our team has been working really hard on this all year. You can now buy OEM Samsung parts direct from iFixit.
The time is here! Genuine Samsung repair parts are now available on iFixit! Find replacement parts for the Galaxy S20 and Galaxy S21 series phones, as well as the Galaxy Tab S7+
Find genuine Samsung parts and Fix Kits here: ifixit.com/samsung
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The butterfly mechanism is powered by a stainless steel spring. That spring is covered by a plastic membrane. This membrane is below the butterfly, and separate from the ingress-protection that they added in the last generation.
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So what’s the new material? I phoned a friend. Meet Eric Beaton, who runs @polyengineering’s materials engineering lab. We used a Fourier Transform Infrared (FTIR) spectrograph to fingerprint both plastics.
As you can see, they’re dramatically different. Apple switched to nylon!
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Costa Rica is going to ban fossil fuels—that’s pretty awesome. independent.co.uk/environmen… Wonder what will happen to all the old engines.
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Apple told @joannastern that “it has made a change to a material in the keyboard mechanism.” We found two changes. The first change is the material they made this membrane out of.
Left: 2018, Right: 2019.
They are visually and mechanically different.
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I don’t want a computer that phones the mothership for permission every time I launch an app. theverge.com/2020/11/12/2156…
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Sob story in the WSJ about how LG and Whirlpool can't get customers to keep their appliances connected to the internet so they can "create new revenue opportunities."
Oh no how horrible!
wsj.com/articles/lg-whirlpoo…
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This is in marked contrast to Tesla, which has completely exceeded my battery lifetime expectations. Liquid cooling plays a big role. electrek.co/2018/04/14/tesla…
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We also provide archives of our content!
I think that we're such a rare species that, like Google, they just use their standard blunt instruments.
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If you have something fixed, does it void the warranty? Most people think the answer is yes. They're wrong, and it's not their fault. uspirg.org/blogs/blog/usp/il…
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Smiles on the panel as Louis points out that society is fine with the safety risks with people fixing cars. Why are we afraid of fixing phones? #RightToRepair
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