To Kyle Wiens, CEO of iFixit, fixing your own stuff is an ecologically correct adventure, a smart and satisfying activity that anyone can do successfully with a little help from his website. The company provides manuals, tutorials, parts and tools, if you need them, plus all the encouragement you could need from a tightly knit DIY community. You make the repairs and, in the classic spirit of geek generosity, you share your experiences and discoveries with other fellow tinkerers.
Kyle will be taking attendees at Macworld Expo on a tour deep inside Apple's gorgeous electronics and Apple product designers' brains during his presentation Friday, January 28th at 9:00 AM. In the meantime, he graciously stopped dissembling things long enough to answer a few questions for us.
I always find it fascinating when Apple cuts features at the last minute. I always wonder if it was an executive decision to save money, or if it wasn't feasible for some manufacturing reason. We found a space for a camera in the 3rd-generation iPod touch, but Apple didn't get around to adding a camera until the 4th-generation.
I think the most interesting decision they've made was the shift to "brick" machined metal cases across their entire pro line (and now the iPhone and iPad). That CNC manufacturing process was incredibly expensive when they first introduced it, but it has opened up huge opportunities for innovative design.
Apple completely surprised us with pins on the logic board in the Apple TV that exactly match the iPhone dock connector. It turns out that it's just a debugging port, but for a while they had us wondering if they thought about having users lug their computers into the living room to sync their Apple TV.
You're right, it is really heavy! Half the weight is the display and the protective glass. The rest of the weight is the metal back panel and battery -- the circuitry weighs very little.
The primary reason for the weight is that the iPad is incredibly rugged, we haven't seen the glass break very often. Apple was very concerned that the iPad integrate with people's lifestyles. They wanted a tablet you could toss into the backseat of your car or hand to your toddler and not have to worry about it breaking. It's far more durable than any other tablet I've seen.
There isn't much out there that is as fixable or moddable as a boring old desktop PC. But many PC laptops are just as tricky to work on as an iBook, and there aren't service manuals available for most of them. Most electronics require advance knowledge to work on them -- having a good service manual is critical to successful tinkering. iFixit has made sure that service manuals are available for every consumer Mac. We don't have repair manuals for every PC, and no one else does either.
Well, fixing the power supplies in iMacs requires advanced electronics and soldering skills. And replacing the batteries in the newest iPods has gotten rather tricky. But just about every procedure we have documented can be followed by a sufficiently determined individual. What's important is persistence, patience, and having the right tools.
