Louis Rossman and iFixit here, making it legal for you to fix your own damn stuff. We passed a bill in New York but the Governor hasn't signed it yet. AMA.

How do you think Europe forcing Apple to adopt usb C will actually work out for consumers?

I think it's a net win across the board. The amount of e-waste generated by specialty proprietary chargers is just crazy. And the latest rumor is that the connection will support faster speeds, so it should be a nice upgrade at the same time.

That said, Right to Repair is about enabling repair, not mandating technology choices. While I personally like the idea of standard chargers, I also love headphone jacks! We have not proposed requiring headphone jacks in all smartphones, as much as I would personally be thrilled to rid the world of the scourge of glued-in batteries in wireless earbuds.

At iFixit, we think that products can and should be designed to be easier to repair. We score gadgets from 1-10 on how easy they are to fix, and we work directly with manufacturers to help them design easier to fix products. Microsoft, for example, has made huge strides with the Surface Pro 9 to improve repairability. It now has accessible external storage—amazing!— and a user replaceable battery (once you remove the screen).

This hasn't gotten enough coverage, but Apple actually completely redesigned the iPhone 14 to make it easier to fix. It now opens from the front and the back, radically lowering the cost for back glass repairs. This is a win for the environment, for repair shops, and for iPhone owners. (The iPhone 14 Pro and Pro Max do not have this improvement—stick to the base model for now!)

MKBHD highlighted that the law as written says.sokmethjng like "any device that can be charged by a cable have to use USB C".

From that he posed that they might just.go 100% wireless. What's your thoughts about that?

Wireless chargers are pretty inefficient, and iirc especially the higher-speed ones can generate a fair bit of heat which isn't great for your phone in the long-term.

Also while they are sometimes very convenient, there are times where they are horribly inconvenient. Using your phone while it charges is easy with a cable, but really awkward with a charging pad. And then there's travelling – have fun whipping out your charging pad on the train, especially if you don't have a tray table.

This is very true. You're talking about moving from a charging technology that is 95% efficient to one that is 25% efficient on a good day. Wireless charging is terrible for climate change.

We ran some numbers with Debugger and found that we would need dozens of new power plants around the world if smartphones switched to wireless charging. I don't think Apple is that short-sighted.

Based on Apple's end-run around the first European USB-C mandate, I think this level of skepticism and suspicion is perfectly justified.

That said, I think the EU drafters were careful with this revision to avoid that loophole, but I don't have the exact text at hand right now. Can anyone find it?

I like fixing stuff myself and make purchasing choices (insofar as possible) based on repairability and longevity. Do you think having a 'certified repairable' system to independently review products and certify them as being made to be repaired would make a difference. It might be another path to getting companies to design with this in mind. Do you think something like this would work and would it be a good idea?

Yes, absolutely! iFixit has been scoring gadgets for repairability for a long time now, here are some handy pages:

• Tablets
• Smartphones
• Laptops

In addition, the French government has a new scoring system that we helped them develop for smartphones, washing machines, laptops, and more. That system is massively successful, and is inspiring an upcoming EU-wide repair labeling scheme.

You can see the french system in action with a label on pages like this:

• https://www.fnac.com/PC-Ultra-Portable-Asus-Zenbook-EVO-UX325-13-3-Intel-Core-i5-16-Go-RAM-512-Go-SSD-Gris/a16284401/w-4

IFixit’s scoring system does not seem very consistent. Just looking at iPad and Surface tablets, the scores appear to vary wildly between iterations whilst the listed repairability factors do not seem to justify the score in comparison to other surface/ipad versions.

Why do the scores appear to be so inconsistent, and do you see any room for improvement in standardising the scores?

Ifixit partnered with Apple for their repair program so there’s a small possibility they’re subconsciously trying to keep that relationship healthy by not going too hard on their products…

We've partnered with Samsung, Google, Valve, Microsoft, Motorola, and a few other folks. Not Apple.

But we maintain complete editorial independence between our objective scoring methodology and the companies that we work with.

What are some common misconceptions of right to repair?

The amount of fear, uncertainty, and doubt spread by the manufacturer lobbyists trying to stop us is just unreal.

Take a look at these astroturfing pages and tell me what your favorite bad-faith arguments are!

• https://www.autosinnovate.org/RightToRepair
• https://www.equipmentdealermagazine.com/repair-done-right-changing-the-narrative-on-right-to-repair/
• https://r2rsolutions.org/
• https://www.autosinnovate.org/factsheet/Automotive%20Right%20to%20Repair%20Myth%20and%20Fact%20Sheet%204.11.2022.pdf

My favorite was this stalker ad the auto OEMs ran during the Massachusetts ballot initiative. If you let a local mechanic fix your car, they will follow you to your house!

(It looks like the video is private now, can anyone find it?) https://www.youtube.com/embed/NYp2_oiwtIg?feature=oembed&rel=0&enablejsapi=1

I found a re-upload here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j0sZpKXMUtA&list=PLhFPpjYO-PFe_KtbpCQMo6zRPM3vIL8FG, assuming you were talking about the parking garage one. Looks like the user uploaded a playlist of the ads they ran.

That's one of them! Repair leads directly to stalking, as we all know.

How do you see the trend of car parts being custom made for specific VIN numbers developing? Do you think people will just take this lying down?

This is an increasing trend. As a software engineer, it is completely trivial to securely tie a part to a VIN / serial number of a device, and use secure locks to practically and legally prevent people from making their own parts.

We saw this with Keurig, where they DRM in K-Cup 2.0 to lock us out of using the coffee of our choice.

John Deere does this, by burning parts in with the VIN before they ship parts.

Apple is doing this, by requiring your serial number to provision a repair part in their new consumer parts program.

It's unethical and it should be illegal. The New York bill has some countermeasures built in to stop this sort of thing. This go-round excludes cars and tractors, but does apply to smartphones. We'll get cars and tractors with the next bill.

What are some things that people are currently not able to fix themselves due to restrictions?

Game console optical drives are a major issue. The optical drive is paired to the main board and so you have to install them as a pair. You can't just buy an off the shelf blu-ray drive to fix your PS5. Which is a bummer because these drives break a lot.

What is it like carrying the world of making repairs on your shoulders?

I swear with out the work you've done, we would all be suffering much more from the planned obsolescence stuff than we are today.

https://imgur.com/INfbwTe

Hi, do you think that Valve opening up the Steam Deck and allowing repairs/upgrades will help? Considering that Valve is arguably one of the largest video game platforms in the world? How has working with Valve been?

Valve has been really great to work with. I love my Steam Deck.

The more examples that we can get out there of companies doing the right thing, the better. Valve is leading the way with repairable hardware, service parts, and repair information. I think it's just fantastic.

As somebody generally opposed to measures like DMCA, but not particularly well informed enough about it, I'm definitely keen to hear your thoughts on it.

So why does it suck?

If you thought "Digital Millennium Copyright Act" sounded like something from 1998, you'd be right. And 1998 lawyers trying to prepare for the digital future made some really broad, sweeping judgments that have hamstrung us all in weird ways.

For repair, the biggest problem is Section 1201, which makes it illegal to break certain kinds of digital locks ("circumvent technological protection measures"). These locks are now present in everything from coffee machines to game consoles, and increasingly, breaking them is a necessary part of repair.

To fix a broken game disc drive in an Xbox or PlayStation, for instance, you've got to break the lock that pairs the drive to the motherboard.

I go into a lot more detail in an article I wrote for Scientific American last year, but tl;dr: Section 1201 is outdated and doesn't let us do repairs on modern gadgets.

Thanks for the great answer!

And a Scientific American article to go and read.

If I had written an article for Scientific American, y'all would never be hearing the end of it tbh. That would be the single greatest accomplishment of my life tbh...

Haha it was flattering that they asked!

What’s an underrated tool that everyone should have?

Well, I'm pretty partial to our Pro Tech Toolkit. We spent years flying around the world doing teardowns with a suitcase full of tools and distilled it down to this pouc.

A soldering iron is also pretty dang handy once you get over the fear of hot things.

What's the status of any similar action in California?

On one hand, it would be invaluable to have such rules in our huge market to influence others, but on the other hand, I'd imagine serious opposition from Cupertino.

As you guessed, big tech lobbyists killed this year's electronics Right to Repair bill in California.

How many times has a company come after you for fixing/showing others how to fix their products? And why do they care? Particularly when the item is older and they no longer support those items.

When we posted a bunch of ventilator repair manuals and other medical device information during the pandemic, the EFF successfully helped us fight a takedown notice from medical device manufacturer Steris.

Louis: your former Governor (Kathy Hochul) has been sitting on a law, the Digital Fair Repair Act, passed by the NY legislature back in June. She still has not signed it. Have you been in contact with the Governor’s staff to urge her to sign it into law? (It would be the first electronics right to repair bill to become law anywhere in the U.S.! ) Also: do you/we know what is holding the Governor back from signing it?

Our coalition has been speaking to the Governor's staff regularly. They understand the arguments in favor. They've also heard an insane amount of F-U-D from manufacturers. We have concerns that she won't sign it in time.

The CEO of Consumer Reports does not write op-eds in state newspapers on a whim: this is a critical inflection point. If we don't make our voices heard, NOW, this might not happen.

It is absolutely essential that you all call, email, tweet, carrier pigeon, or do anything else you can think of to get through to the governor right now.

In your opinion, how should companies best strike a balance between creating sleek and aesthetically-pleasing products while also making them repairable? Do you believe these are exclusive categories?

Focus on function over form would be important. Framework is making some pretty good looking laptops that are highly repairable. Also marketing seems to heavily distort people's perception of tech that's aesthetically pleasing

100%, Framework has managed to nail this.

iFixit does a lot of consulting with designers and manufacturers, and we usually say there doesn't need to be a tradeoff between form factor and repairability. It just takes a little more work and creativity to find a solution that's fixable.

We don't need every device to look like a Toughbook—we just need parts to be modular and accessible.

Repairable design doesn't have to be ugly or bulky. Fairphone is pretty much aesthetically identical to all the other black rectangle smartphones—but you can change its battery without any tools, because the back case is held on by a removable bezel and clips. Framework is as sleek and lightweight as most other laptops in its class, but you can swap out its ports with the press of a button. Its screen bezel is held on with magnets.

The key to repairable design is modularity, making sure that the most breakable parts aren't welded or soldered or superglued. Making things repairable without making them bulky is a design challenge, but design teams keep proving it's possible. Hardware designers are smart people. They just need to keep repairability on the design priority list.

If I wanted to buy a phone, a tablet, and a laptop, which are the most repairable options?

• Phone: Fairphone. They don't sell them directly in the US but they do work well here.
• Laptop: Framework Modular ports, repair guides, repair parts, super repairable design, thin as a MacBook. Pretty dang sexy if you ask me.
• Tablet: Not sure, but the new Surface Pro 9 has a replaceable battery which is pretty badass / novel.

Here's what we wrote about the new Surface Pro:

In an era flooded with devices that are hard to repair, Microsoft has made some of the worst offenders. Just a few years ago, iFixit teardown engineers awarded the Surface Pro 7 one of our lowest possible scores—a 1 out of 10—the battery was glued down, making it next to impossible to replace, and the RAM, CPU, and SSD were all soldered directly to the motherboard. To be frank, we had all but written Microsoft devices off for a while; the devices simply weren’t repairable.

But change is always possible. To wit; our teardown of the new Surface Pro 9 confirms that it’s something of an evolutionary leap forward for Microsoft. And when a manufacturer as large as Microsoft takes serious steps specifically to improve repairability, it’s worth highlighting.

Is it ethical to unlock hardware you own? When you buy an item (Car, TV, Test Equipment, Etc.) You own it and everything it came with or in it. So if you modify the software/hardware to be able to use hardware that you own should it be ok.

Absolutely. How are we asking this question with a straight face? We've all been somehow brainwashed. Is it ethical to paint your car? Is it ethical to add a deck to your house?

Of course it is.

You bought it, you own it. Software shouldn't change that.

The implementation, of course, is very nuanced—we have to maintain our ownership rights despite a thicket of copyright, patent, and trademark law. iFixit and our allies at EFF, Public Knowledge, Consumer Reports, and others are successfully pushing back hard on this. We have to out-expert and out-argue well-funded interests on the other side. The future of ownership is at stake!

To learn more, check out my article The End of Ownership and the book it inspired by the same name by renowned IP legal scholars Aaron Perzanowski and Jason Schulz.

Absolutely love the work y'all have been doing in this space. I work in the commercial AV field and I hate how I'm limited to just being able to say "yep you're right that thing is broken" with no real ability to go deeper and diagnose the problem.

I know Louis has made a strong case against specifically Apple's authorized repair program and how sketchy it is, but I can understand companies especially those that are enterprise facing wanting to maintain a standard of quality.

So my question is what would you want to see as a fair system that allows for companies to ensure good quality repair technicians are doing the work while at the same time allowing for end users proper ownership of their stuff?

Make good products. Design them so they're straightforward to fix. Your in-warranty repair network will love you. So will third party techs.

Allow competition with the aftermarket. What's best for your customers is to get things fixed. A profitable after-warranty repair network is a perfectly fine thing to run, but there's no need to absolutely maximize this revenue channel. If you try, you'll hurt the overall customer experience and alienate your best fans.

Cool, but I just read the bill and it specifically excludes motor vehicles and farming equipment. What the fuck?

The idea is to reduce the amount of opposition by narrowing the bill. It's a strategy. It worked in Colorado for a wheelchair right to repair bill. It worked in 2012 for the automotive right to repair bill. We'll see if it works here.

Yup. Once we get this, we can work on passing a farm-focused bill. Maybe in Nebraska!

Do you think the Right to Repair movement, and the broader movement on ownership more generally, has been stalling in terms of actually getting things done, and why?
I see the message being spread further than ever before, but I haven't seen any tangible progress in actual legislative bodies, especially with the shit Hochul is pulling. Do you two have any insight into why?

Also, do you have any non-obvious tips on leadership in your respective companies you could share?

Our first US state victory was in Colorado this year with an electric wheelchair right to repair bill that Gov Polis signed. It's a huge win for people with mobility challenges.

Our second legislative victory was the New York bill—and that's just one signature away. This bill is much more broad—covers most electronics that cost more than $10. Gov Hochul just needs to sign it!

In France, last year a law requiring repairability labels next to prices went into effect and has had a huge impact on consumer behaviour.

On behalf of Samsung, OpinionWay investigated how the French repairability index has influenced consumer attitudes and behaviour since its introduction January 1, 2021.

Key findings:

• 83% say that they try to repair or have repaired their faulty devices instead of replacing them immediately.
• 54% of those try to fix it themselves or with help from friends/family.
• Only 29% leave the repair to a professional service.
• 71% of French have heard about the index.
• 80% of >50 y/o, but only 52% of 18-25 y/o have heard about it.
• 86% say that the index impacts their purchasing behaviour.
• 80% would even give up their favorite brand for a more repairable product.

This is starting to influence product designs, as you can see with Microsoft's Surface Pro 9 with a replaceable battery and Apple's totally internally redesigned iPhone 14 that opens from both sides.

Is it taking longer than we'd like? Yes. Are we kicking the pants off of these trillion-dollar companies in the sphere of public opinion? Also yes.

We're (slowly) winning.

On leadership: Create more value than you capture. The more you give away, the better off you are in the long run. I have our whole team over to my place for BBQs regularly and my wife and I make it a really fun experience. We go out of our way to invest in, and take care of, our team.

Love your work on this, Louis, and ifixit is a great addition to our world. I would love to see someone like ifixit (or maybe many groups, depending on topic/industry) give awards for high repairability in design. Do you think that would be something you all would like to do?

For an art project I got some nonworking kindle devices via freecycle, and the first model of the Kindle was AMAZING to take apart. I wish everything was designed like that. It was an absolute pleasure to work on and an absolute shame it is not still around, supported, updated, and sold.

I think that's a great idea. iFixit has our repairability ratings, but it would make a lot of sense to give an annual award to the most repairable products, and the most innovative designs that advance repairability.

What kind of trophy should go along with it?

Will the bill sitting at Governors desk encompass all purchases made by consumers in NY? I currently can't get the technical.support documents for my hybrid car from BMW without a subscription.

The New York bill covers most products containing electronics, but has some notable carve outs. It does not include motor vehicles (these are already handled by a national Right to Repair agreement between the automakers and the aftermarket), home appliances, medical devices, public safety communications equipment like police radios, agricultural equipment, and off-road equipment.

We expect to see future legislation address these sectors.

For cars, the information is available, but continues to cost money. We have not seen a bill introduced that would make this free of charge, but I think that would be a good idea.

Hey there! Love what you guys do, and love to see a SLO company on here.

Way back when I was a CS student at Cal Poly we partnered with you guys for a technical writing class to do a repair guide. (We fixed our teammates Fender amp: https://www.ifixit.com/Device/Fender_Frontman_15r). It was a really great experience, and you guys provided us with some basic tools to get us up and running.

​

My questions then are:

1. Are there any similar programs that you guys run to get people off the ground repairing their own stuff (and potentially writing a guide as they do)? I could see it being a bit more difficult to get going without all the resources we were offered when we wrote our guide.
2. Do you guys still partner with Cal Poly to teach students how to write guides? I had a ton of fun doing it, and I still always love getting the "Your guides helped X people this week" emails!

Awesome, thanks for your work on that set of guides! 45,000 views ain't too shabby. The program you were in is still going strong—we've had over 25,000 students from dozens of universities write guides.

We donate lots of toolkits to schools, libraries, and repair cafes around the world. And every day, we hear from people who successfully fix gadgets for the first time with our guides.

But for anyone who's intimidated to get started on their own, repair cafes are a great place to learn from real live humans. If you can't find a repair cafe near you, Fixit Clinic does online repair cafes.

Hey, Cal Poly student here. about what percent of writeups (and traffic, if you know that) come from the student tech writing program? I can only find "Since we launched the program, over 25,000 students have worked together to create more than 44,000 repair manuals on iFixit. ” on the tech writing program webpage. I figure the writeups that draw the most traffic are consoles, new flagship phones, etc. and these are usually given to ifixit staff writers instead of left for students. But also that 44,000 manuals is probably a significant fraction of the total. Have been wondering about this since ENGL 149. Thanks!

Hello! Great question. Over half of our guides, by percentage, are student-written—we have about 88k guides right now (including translations). But as you guessed, the guides that get the most traffic are for the most popular gadgets, so the ratio of traffic is quite a bit below that. We try to focus our in-house tech writers on the products with the most repair interest.

Thoughts on the Framework laptop?

We've written a lot about Framework, I think it's just fantastic. https://www.ifixit.com/News/51614/framework-laptop-teardown-10-10-but-is-it-perfect https://www.ifixit.com/News/63257/framework-laptop-a-framework-for-a-repairable-future

And then there’s Frameworks commitment to sustainability and open source development. While most manufacturers these days talk about all the ways they’re helping to reduce waste, it’s the niche market and smaller manufacturers that seem to be hitting the sustainability mark with repairable products.

By purchasing devices like this we are rewarding responsible corporate behaviour and sending a clear message to the market: this is what we want to see more of. It’s safe to say we are pretty thrilled about this thing. Framework has gone above and beyond even what we hoped for in a repairable laptop, and managed to do it in a super-sleek, affordable package. The only tiny nitpick we have is that the four USB-C ports on the motherboard are soldered in place, and even that isn’t a huge deal since they’ll have the adapters plugged into them most of the time.

Just wanna say thanks to iFixit for a wonderful tool set. It helped me out a bunch. Would it be possible to get a narrower screwdriver extender? I had a couple times where it was too wide to use.

Totally fair point. We sell the Marlin driver set for this situation—sometimes, you just need a long narrow shaft.

Why hasn’t the Governor signed the bill in NY!?

I don't know. Maybe we haven't yelled loud enough?

Question for u/kwiens, how often do you get 'Mennonite using technology' jokes? Asking for a another Mennonite.

Proud neo-luddite over here. Greetz to my Mennonite homies.

how do we balance the need for safety when we have items like medical equipment that can kill someone (i.e. respirator that someone "fix" but ends up over pressurizing lungs or iv machines that dispense the wrong medication that overdoses someone) with making sure that people can fix equipment they own (like farmer because able to fix tractor, or person fixing their car).

There has to be some limitations but you know companies will attempt to make it the most stringent.

Does it become like electrical work or contracting in the US for single family houses where if you own it and won't cause damage to others then you can do the work yourself, but if you multi-family dwelling or for commercial work you have to have some sort of professional that certified?

The most dangerous medical equipment is non-functional medical equipment. I have so many hospital repair technician friends (they're called Biomedical Engineers) who have exactly the same problems repairing medical equipment that we do fixing consumer devices. The problem is an epidemic.

Don't trust me, the FDA did an investigation into the quality of third party service and found that it was astonishingly high quality.

For biomeds, every day is life and death. If the defibrillator power supply doesn't work, someone might die. They fix critical equipment every day without manufacturer support.

We have not found an industry where you can make a principled argument that owners should not be able to maintain their own equipment. In the medical world, the owners are hospitals. They hire and train and equip technicians to do the work.

This is a question of control: should the manufacturer of the equipment control what happens to it throughout its life, or should the person or organization that paid for it have that control?

It's really that simple.

My fundamental problem with all of the proposed "Right to repair" legislation has its roots in free market capitalism.

This is a bandaid that will effectively do a couple things if passed: 1. create a barrier to entry for effective competition., and thus 2. entrench the established companies, strengthening their position in the market.

While I understand the need for a "right to repair", I'm very hesitant for the government to get involved in a market as volatile as electronics, the development and growth thereof came from liberal free market policies.

Legislation by the tech giants to ban things like hacking and voiding of warranties for repair work have been shot down for similar reasons. A lot of these right-to-repair issues can be nullified by legal hacking of the devices, and maybe the energy should be spent there.

The Capitalist argument here is: if the consumer demands it, the market will follow. If consumers really care, they will demand repairable devices, and someone will emerge that meets that demand. What we have seen in the tech space, unfortunately, is lack of enforcement of antitrust legislation in the form acquisitions intended to literally gobble up competition by the tech giants.

Still, what the entire right-to-repair argument sounds like to me is a desire for the government to prop up an industry through regulation. In the long run this will have a detrimental effect for everyone, including the consumer.

What do you say to those who want to maintain free market enterprise here?

Right to Repair is fundamentally in support of free market capitalism. The problem is that there isn't a free market for repair service right now, and manufacturers' repair monopolies have gotten bigger and bigger. No US Right to Repair legislation has tried to restrict design or stifle innovation—actually, we're mostly fighting in the antitrust space.

Copyright takes freedom away from citizens and hands it to creators. That's a reasonable tradeoff for music and art—we don't mind not having the freedom to duplicate music willy nilly. But if you give that same level of control to a manufacturer, who then uses it to restrict repairs, we have a problem.

Right to Repair laws like the New York bill require manufacturers to stop stacking the deck against independent repair shops: They'll have to share parts, tools, and information with those shops at fair and reasonable terms. That's it.

A free repair market would be great. I would like that. We need legislation to get there from here.