iFixit is a private company in San Luis Obispo, California. The company was founded in 2003, as a result of Kyle Wiens not being able to locate an Apple iBook G3 repair manual while the founders were attending Cal Poly. iFixit promotes the consumers' right to repair, selling repair parts and publishing free wiki-like online repair guides for consumer electronics and gadgets on its web site. The company also performs product teardowns of consumer devices.
Business model
iFixit has released product teardowns of new mobile and laptop devices, which provides advertising for the company's parts and equipment sales. These teardowns have been covered by PC World, the Mac Observer, NetworkWorld and other publications. Co-founder Kyle Wiens has said that he aims to reduce electronic waste by teaching people to repair their own gear, and by offering tools, parts, and a forum to discuss repairs. In 2011, he traveled through Africa with a documentary team to meet a community of electronics technicians who fix and remake the world's discarded electronics. iFixit provides a software as a service platform known as Dozuki to allow others to use iFixit's documentation framework to produce their own documentation. O'Reilly Media's Make and Craft magazines use Dozuki to feature community guides alongside instructions originally written by the staff for the print magazine. On April 3, 2014 iFixit announced a partnership with Fairphone. During the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic, iFixit and Calprig, the California arm of the Public Interest Research Group, worked with hospitals and medical research facilities to gather the largest known database of medical equipment manuals and repair guides to help support the health industry during the pandemic.
Reception
In September 2015, Apple removed the iFixit app from the App Store in reaction to the company's publication of a teardown of a developer pre-release version of the Apple TV obtained under Apple's Developer Program violating a signed Non-Disclosure Agreement and as such their developer account was suspended. In response iFixit says it has worked on improving its mobile site for users to access its services through a mobile browser. In April 2019, it was revealed that some Oculus Quest and Oculus Rift S devices contain a physical easter egg reading "Hi iFixit! We See You!", illustrating the fact that device manufacturers are well aware of iFixit.
