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Are there any plans in taking iFixit into a different direction?

I just finished watching this video, and was somewhat surprised to hear that there might be some changes (14:22) Are there any plans in escalating this site to a more professional level? Are there any plans in ultimately changing the mission of iFixit?

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Our mission is to teach everyone to fix everything. That's what makes us get up in the morning, and that's what makes me excited to work from dawn to dusk making the site better.

We've been hearing loud and clear from the professional repair community that there are some simple things we could to do help them out. I agree. So we've created some new tools for professionals.

Here's what we've released as part of iFixit Pro so far:

  1. Business startup advice
  2. Wholesale parts
  3. Professional tools
  4. Dedicated business pages to promote your brand

We have a few more things in the works.

One of the major reasons we're expanding our offerings to professionals is because we want to broaden the mix of expertise on Answers and the rest of the site. We get a lot of questions that never get answered, and it would sure be nice to have a broader range of expertise available to help.

That means welcoming new techs to the site and embracing a variety of in-depth technical topics. All questions and answers are welcome here as long as they're helping people fix things.

So no, we're not changing our mission or our focus. We're just getting more relevant to a bunch of really smart fixers.

Fixers come from all walks of life. By definition, we're all amateurs at fixing most things out there. Some of us make a living by getting really good at fixing a narrow selection of products. I don't know how to fix most stuff, but I'm eager to share what I do know how to repair. And I'm super interested in learning from the rest of you.

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This video was made by Louis Rossmann. Louis is a board repair colleague with an expertise in MacBook repair and microsoldering. He is my personal friend---the kind of friend that you debate and fight with every day :)

Honestly, Louis hates iFixit. I have always loved iFixit. I am slowly beating into him the general idea that iFixit is a wonderful thing for the world. Louis made some disparaging remarks about his experience with iFixit in an earlier recent video. I called him on it. A day of 'debate' later and he makes this video. He is overstating any involvement I have at iFixit in this video--I responded to this in my comment on this video. He is really giving an opinion on what he'd like to see out of iFixit Pro Wholesale parts. I couldn't agree more. Louis is full of a lot of really fantastic ideas if you can get past his natural brutal arrogance and hail of f-bombs. He is also one of those rare guys, like all of you, that enjoy sharing information and helping people succeed in their repairs. I'd love to see folks like Louis be enticed to spend more time in iFixit Answers.

Like Nick, I too, would not see iFixit making guides useful for professionals. However, I'd sure love to see the Answers section up the ante with troubleshooting support for everyone. I think this is possible.

This year has marked the first ever wireless repair expo, and the spontaneous formation of several robust communities of repair professionals that exchange information on a daily basis. I'm not driving the bus here, but I sure would like to see more professionals at the iFixit water cooler. I think the 'best answer goes to top' rating system is fantastic. What a great way for that one novel answer to bubble straight to the top of the pile.

There are more professionals in the Answers section now than even a few months ago. This is great!

For cell phone board-level repair, this comes at a time when the 'old watering hole' is collapsing due to fractured leadership ("Marcus" Cyberdoc and Filip Pusca--WitesOmTesla had a joint venture subscription-based forum. They have ended their partnership.)

I noticed a suggestion today in Answers, from Rany, to create a new section: iFixit Troubleshooting. Here, perhaps we could work on a collection of Wiki's to hash out and formalize the broader question of how to approach classic problems in repair. Dare I say--create standards? Most of the newbie questions in iFixit Answers could be answered easily by pointing them, then, to these documents.

There is a clear need in the repair community to have a place for professionals to discuss the repair challenges that are thrown at us as devices continue to evolve. Microsoldering, Board-level Troubleshooting, LCD refurbishing, Classic 'Achilles heel' type problems for every device..... Right now this is happening in a highly disorganized way--reddit, various cell phone repair facebook forums, instagram, parts vendor blogs, and content embedded on page 10 of repair forum X.

I would LOVE to see the resources of iFixit step in to formally provide support for this growing need---that will be up to Kyle and his team.

Kyle--I've been talking about you, and man, I hope this is true.

Question--If you went home tonight, and found that your dishwasher had water in the bottom of it, what would you do?

  • A: Check iFixit Answers and grab my flashlight and screwdrivers.
  • B: Call the repairman.

My impression is that you'd pick A. I have shared that impression as part of my new rant "Why Kyle Wiens is a Rock Star" (that and the grammar thing--love!) that I have used to try and convince my Scroogey friend Louis that iFixit is a good thing.

Don't tell me if you'd pick B---I couldn't stand it :)

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The only reason I said what I did about Answers then is I was taking a good long break from all of this iFixit stuff and in that time I learned so much more then I did with iFixit. That was what inspired that post. I truly think it did wake them up with these new changes to some degree. Not as much as I would probably like, but it did push them forward a little bit.

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Are you Nick1296? :)

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Yep. I try to use a similar name where I can, so make seeing it a little easier. Admittedly, I am kind of blunt about iFixit but I'll give them a second chance. Maybe they changed for real this time, and not saying they would but not doing anything to change.

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I do somewhat agree with both of you, but am very leery about taking it over the top of us newbie's. Great thing to diversify to a professional section and a section for the rest of us. Oh and yes, I do consider myself a newbie. Just being capable of doing some microsoldering, reflow and reball, does not make me an expert. My participation on ifixit is non-commercial and about having fun, learning and sharing. You know, the "Goody Two-shoes" way. I have seen to many professional sites gone south for exactly this reason " is collapsing due to fractured leadership" and would hate to see us go that way.

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Definitely option A. Our dishwasher actually stopped working the other day, and were were poking all around inside trying to figure it out. Then we realized a friend had unplugged it while rearranging pots in the cupboard!

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I understand what's discussed, but I don't see the point in professional vs. newbie sections.

There is 2 + 2 = 4 - the answer is the same to a 3 year old as it is to a PhD. You can have a guide on how to replace an LCD assembly, and a guide on how to replace the LCD by itself. So long as each guide is efficient and to the point, there need not be a separate guide for newbies. A newbie can choose to perform the easier(albeit more expensive) job, but it is still the same procedure.

Let's be honest for a second; In this business what separates professionals from newbies are that professionals call themselves professionals and ask for money. I've been to enough places where people who claim to have 25+ years of experience are opening an iFixit guide to fix something, and I smack them on the head for removing the keyboard/trackpad/battery/ram cover to replace the lcd screen same as I would anyone else. "Professionals" all too often are as clueless as someone who has never opened a machine, and they need guides telling them what to do as much as anyone else.There should be guides that tell you how to do what it is you sought out to do - professional vs. newbie guides are irrelevant.

There are professionals reflowing/reballing GPUs and calling it repair, professionals who advertise 20 years of experience who think "diskwarrior" actually FIXES DISKS and not just partitions who destroy potentially recoverable data. Professional is a silly word in a business with no standard or metric for its members.

Back to there being only one answer. One point Jessa frequently points out in our conversations is the importance of having a repair elementary school, vs a college. I see this very simply. I see "i spilled water on my board, tried a new keyboard, tried cleaning it and it does not turn on, where do I start?" I can give one of two answers here. I can start with "Too difficult, you probably don't have the tools or the brains for this. Sorry." Or I can give the real answerl "Find a boardview and a schematic online so we can work together. Find these voltages on the schematic and see where they show up on the boardview: s ppbus_g3h showing 12.6v? is PP3V42_G3H coming on at 3.42v?" there is the third way which is to ignore it, but that defeats the purpose of an answers section.You need to know what a multimeter is here, you need to know where to find schematics(and for obvious reasons a public company like iFixit should NEVER be hosting them).

If someone doesn't want to take on the job, I absolutely, completely understand. At the same time, it doesn't change the content of the answer. Someone may not like that they asked a difficult question, but the answer itself is no less difficult.

What WOULD be useful are guides so that I don't have to point out what a resistor is, what a multimeter is, etc, in each post. I can get to the root of someone's problem quickly, but to go over what voltage is on each post would be horrifying in the length of the answers. I would write this but making educational texts isn't fun enough to do for free.

I remember the end of 2008 very well. I couldn't be trusted to remove RAM from a laptop without blowing it up. If the guide I had followed were more to the point, and the part at a reasonable price, I would have never looked elsewhere. What interested me about the future of iFixit is the idea of one place for people to get everything - an ecosystem that does not require looking elsewhere. That would be an industry disrupter, and I am all for industry disruption if it improves it.

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"Let's be honest for a second; In this business what separates professionals from newbies are that professionals call themselves professionals and ask for money. I've been to enough places where people who claim to have 25+ years of experience are opening an iFixit guide to fix something, and I smack them on the head for removing the keyboard/trackpad/battery/ram cover to replace the lcd screen same as I would anyone else." Well said, Louis. I've even taken it as far as shaming people I know can do this well as a hobby for using iFixit and relying on it. If you can do it, why are you using a iFixit guide? Because you're afraid to break something? If you're afraid to break stuff yet you know, you're not a "expert" to me. You're someone who calls themselves a expert when you're still a novice because you're afraid to take chances. I learned what I know from experience. Not iFixit.

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I hear what you're saying, Louis. Let's set some goals for what it would take to get there. We're constrained by not being able to post the schematics — but maybe that's a good thing because we can focus on fundamental techniques rather than specific details. Where should we start?

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Louis I think you have over simplified things a bit. While you & Nick raise some good points. I don't think Pro's should be ashamed on using the guides. If you focus on a very narrow group of systems then I can see how one does not need to refer to the guides as its rote to them. I'm in that space as the company I work for has a set group of systems (as many companies do). If you are a shingled repair pro you don't get to choose what walks in. I would refresh my self using the guides before I attempted to to the repair. If I couldn't find the IFIXIT guide I'd search the web. Thats being smart!

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I think you're confusing what the guides are: there not diagnostic or technique. They only offer how to gain access and the removal. What I think you're asking here is we need more of these types of documents explaining how to diagnose a dead keyboard when you've got a system thats had a drink spilled in it. Or, how to use a meter to test a battery or a fuse (I'm not taking about how to use the meter its self here!) just the test points and what you need to read.

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Dan,

I do not think pros should be ashamed of using guides. I think Nick & I have differing opinions here.

I love guides that are helpful and will happily look at them without shame. I suggested smacking a technician not for using a guide, but for doing the job in a silly manner because the guide told him to. Removing a bunch of extra components and performing extra steps is a silly way to do the job. It increases the risk of something else breaking and increases service time for a customer. And to be polite I won't mention the reflow videos suggesting people buy heatguns to fix BGA!! I do not look down on guides - if I did, I would not spend time creating them. What I'm suggesting is that a guide explaining how to replace a screen, should not be telling you how to remove the trackpad/keyboard/casing when doing so is absolutely unnecessary to replacing the screen. In a general takeapart guide, this makes sense, but a specific repair guide should be focused on that repair.

When iFixit guides tell me how to do things I need to do, I will read them. :D I have no shame when it comes to learning from someone who knows more than I do in a given field.

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I think they're just trying to go for wholesale. I can't see the guides changing to what pros like us can do with them but maybe they'll open their doors up to repair shops with the wholesale discounts and other programs they have now.

I can't see iFixit making guides pros like us would use since it's still a noob site. Good luck getting a noob to replace a GPU with a 2,000$ machine. For them, it's more practical to replace the whole board and not the GPU. Some of them might do some board level troubleshooting, but the people who do it are probably not using these guides anyway.

I don't know yet. Maybe people will be interested in board level repair and GPU replacements. Only the future will tell. And by GPU replacements I don't mean running like a bunch of children to buy motherboards on eBay, CL or stealing them from MacBooks with cracked glass/display, or even both. Screw that. I mean getting on a BGA rework machine with a BGA package putting the work in to use the same board but replace the dead GPU only.

If my comments on how most IT people handle the issue of bad motherboards offends you, tough. Get over it.

The people in this industry know how to remove a motherboard, use a multimeter and replace boards. We're interested in board level repair. We don't give a crap about replacing a whole board over one dead part, or even fried GPU because Apple didn't cool the 2011 MacBook Pro correctly and like ignoring it until they get hit with a lawsuit.

I sure don't count on iFixit selling BGA chips anytime soon. That probably won't happen.

I use iFixit to get tools. I was turned off of the Answers thread 8 months ago, but I would still use them for tools. Maybe even parts at times. But the current state of guides? No way. I can replace a battery without a guide. I can replace a motherboard without a guide. You know how I do it? I do it by using my brain, because for me I was terrible at math and stuff in Highschool but put me near a laptop and I got it. I can also do it because I spent my time learning how to do this, so naturally I don't need a manual.

Just my 2 cents on the matter.

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I do agree with you there needs to be a clearinghouse for Pro's to disseminate knowledge at the board level and parts. I don't see the IFIXIT Guide or Answer areas as being that. Sure selling tools and the basic parts makes sense for IFIXIT. Getting deep into the SMT stuff I don't think makes sense here its just to many parts to manage and they can't sell them in small quantity that would economical for them. This is where a electronics part house is the better place. Granted, there you'll end up needing to buy a cane of chips (50 ~ 100) or a roll of the smaller components (1000 ~ 2000). So you do need to have the business to do this level of work.

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oldturkey03 will be eternally grateful.