You gotta fight for your right…to fix your iPhone!
This is Sandra Tsing Loh with the Loh Down on Science.
Meet Kyle Wiems, Cal Poly San Luis Obispo engineering student. 2003, Apple iBook falls off of his dorm bed! Electricity light’s dark, probably mechanical—loose wire, broken metal part—
In the ‘70s, we had cute hippie manuals like “Keeping Your VW Bug Alive for the Complete Idiot.” 30 years later, Kyle finds Apple has removed all Apple repair manuals from the Internet! Always buy new! Grrr.
So Kyle helps fight for laws forcing Apple to let folks fix! He also started Ifixit, an online repository of over 100,000 do-it-yourself manuals, from the Iphone 15 Pro to Black+ Decker’s hand-held pet vacuum. Free. Green. Nerd’s delight.
From our cool book of the month, Vince Beiser’s POWER METAL.
Reference: Beiser, V. (2024). Power Metal: The race for the resources that will shape the future. Riverhead Books.