Disqus
iFixit has decided to open all of its repair manuals to the world for general use – a collection which includes 91 Mac models, 34 iPods, and a couple of iPhones!
Frighteningly, they have 154,556 images (including revision history and thumbnails) and over 1,000 step-by-step guides on their servers – so this is no small collection of data we are talking about here.
Effective immediately, we are licensing all iFixit repair manuals under the Creative Commons BY-NC-SA license. To my knowledge, this is the largest free release of repair documentation ever. We are committing to make our repair manuals available to everyone in the world, forever, for free.
We will be providing a XML data dump of our repair manuals sometime in the middle of next year. We are in the process of finalizing a new repair manual XML schema (if you want input on the process, please contact us). We hope to host the data archive at the Internet Archive as well as seed it via BitTorrent.
You might wonder why they are doing this – and their argument is that there is no sustainability in most electronics devices currently, and repairing them is one way to help try and achieve that. Of course, being a parts retailer is where the commercial kickback happens, but still it’s a very noble gesture indeed I think. Well done, iFixit!
You can learn more on the iFixit website here. I’m headed there shortly to check the info on iPhones!
About The Author
Ben Robinson
Ben is a 10+ year veteran of the Mobile industry – starting his career when SMS was a still a relatively new concept for most people (!), he has now consulted on everything from bleeding-edge Mobile content, to the next-gen accessories you might view it on. As a result he has a broad and deep knowledge in numerous areas of Mobile – from network operators to device vendors, to infrastructure and middleware vendors (not to mention content delivery) – and has worked for companies in all of these areas! He is based in the UK, a hotbed of activity for mobile, and recently became a father for the second time – as oppose to in his younger years when he was happy spend time tweaking all manner of mobile devices to 'nth' degree, he now looks for services and hardware that provide the most efficient, compact, and reliable improvements to his already manic life! It’s his opinion that Mobile solutions should be there to help to make your life better – if a particular solution (be it service or device) isn’t doing this, he believes you need to ask the very important question of why you continue to use it... His focus at IntoMobile is mainly on Mobile content, services, and infrastructure, particularly as regards the UK market – and with the occasional look at devices. Additionally, using his extensive experience in the industry, he will provide commentary on the industry at large, with regular (and hopefully thought-provoking) articles.
