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REPAIR

By Kit Marsden

Tag: pictures

Ready For Action

My iFixIt driver set, all ready to do some fixing!

iFixIt Drivers

iFixIt Drivers

If you like the look of it, you can buy the same one here from iFixIt.

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About Me

In my work as a musician I often have to repair equipment which has worn out on the road – including computers and other electronics – and put together custom cable runs and rack panels in my studio.

I’m an entirely self-taught, amateur tech repairer and refurbisher and I have had no training in the field – besides what I can pick up from YouTube tutorials and iFixIt guides – but I am passionate about sustainable technology which lasts and can be repaired.

Macs are ubiquitous in my industry, and I have been a Mac user since 2008 – starting out on a secondhand mid-2005 iBook G4. I love the way Apple products work – the design and the workflow just make sense – but I disagree with the company’s innate paternalism and recent form-over-function design philosophy.

I buy almost all tech products secondhand, and I believe that Apple have made almost all their product lines worse in the last seven years; older MacBooks are objectively better than the latest models.

I believe this is because technology companies are artificially accelerating the rate of technological change in order to sell more products. Apple are not by any means the only company doing this (although they are serial offenders).

‘Forced obsolescence‘ benefits nobody but the CEOs of tech companies – whilst repairable devices and easy access to parts, tools and schematics benefits consumers, small businesses and the environment. This is why we need Right To Repair legislation. I am a strong supporter of the Right To Repair campaign, and the Restart Project.

I will try and document the repairs I do here and on social media, in the hope of raising the profile of issues surrounding Right To Repair, digital ownership and e-waste as much as I can – and in the hope of demonstrating that anyone can fix their electronics and other household items, instead of succumbing to manufacturers’ bullying and the siren call of throwawayandbuynew culture.

Read More

A collection of links to further reading on topics surrounding Right To Repair, why this issue is so important, what progress has been made so far, etc.

Right To Repair Europe
What Do We Want?
The Restart Project
How To Support Right To Repair
The Guardian
Why Right To Repair Matters
The Economist
Why Is The Right To Repair Spreading?
The Restart Project
Restart Futures
Durability Matters
What Is Planned Obsolescence?
iFixIt
Repairable Products Make Sense
iFixIt
iFixIt Manifesto
Repair.org
Policy Objectives
Fight To Repair Newsletter
Stay Up-To-Date On The Fight To Repair

Resources

An easy list of websites and fixing tools I mention in my posts, which I have found helpful in fixing or modifying things:

iFixIt Repair Guides
Easy, step-by-step repair instructions with pictures, recommended tools, and community tips.
The Restart Project
A passionate right-to-repair community. Find your local fixing groups or get advice on the forum pages.
coconutBattery
Slimline utility for checking battery capacity on laptops and iOS devices.
DriveDx
Test drive health and life remaining in SATA and SSD storage volumes.
GrandPerspective
A bold visualisation of exactly what is taking up space on your hard drive, and where.
Kryptonite
The successor to PurgeWrangler, this script will enable eGPU support on Macs with Thunderbolt 1 or Thunderbolt 2 ports, adding to Apple’s native support of eGPUs on Thunderbolt 3 enabled Macs.
YAM Display
Use an iPad as a secondary monitor on any Mac running OS X 10.9 (‘Mavericks’) or later.
Everymac.com
Specifications and information on ever model of Mac ever built!
dosdude1
User-friendly OS patchers.
MacRumors Forums
A wealth of information on all kinds of Apple products.
Fritzing
Open-source electronics and PCB design software for Mac, Windows and Linux.

Memory Lane

Revisit a project from the past at random:

mid-2009 MacBook On Mojave
My ‘secondary’ laptop – an A1181 white MacBook from 2009 – only officially supports up to OS X 10.11 (‘El Capitan’). Using the super-easy, user-friendly patcher tools from dosdude1, I was able to force this machine onto macOS 10.14.6 (‘Mojave’) in line with all the other Macs I am using. Some trackpad functionality has altered …

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