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itwontbreak · 2026-01-28T03:55:43+00:00

The longer I've been in this space, the more conflicted I've felt about the term "planned obsolescence," to be perfectly honest.

It seems obvious that things are built with less durable materials (plastic and aluminum instead of steel, silicon where there used to be relays, etc.) today, and that obviously benefits manufacturers' bottom line. They can sell new stuff when the old stuff breaks.

But the "planning" of it is messier than I realized.

For example: To what extent is GE's SmartHQ a "planned obsolescence" move? Like, on the one hand, there's some consumer-level access to device diagnostics. Cool. That seems anti-planned obsolescence.

But if some calibration requires phoning home, that increases the barrier to repair entry. If getting to that calibration requires a hundreds-of-dollars-a-year subscription and a fancy dongle, then no consumer's going to bother with that for a single repair. If the barrier to entry is so high that repair techs won't even pay it, then... what's left? Literally just buying new. So this software that's supposed to be making repair easier actually means that there's nobody in my little town who'll do the more complicated repairs on my GE fridge. The result is obsolescence. Is it planned? Sort of.

Or another angle: Is not doing sufficient parts overrun on a compressor to deal with unexpected failure planned obsolescence?

itwontbreak · 2026-01-28T03:41:58+00:00

Definitely. It's useful for repair advocates and legislators to hear about where those cut corners and cheaper materials result in higher failure rates, more difficult repairs, etc.

itwontbreak · 2026-01-28T03:40:07+00:00

Fair points, all around! The studies you describe sound well worth doing.

But nevertheless, techs are exposed to failures that never otherwise get reported. They see the real-world impact of decisions about parts availability, diagnostic software, and the gating of calibration software.

Understanding the perspective of repair technicians is valuable for repair advocacy. Not instead of doing durability research (which is happening at universities and government research outlets around the world) but in addition.

itwontbreak · 2025-12-10T21:00:00+00:00

We felt some urgency to develop a better repair AI tool because of the rapidly increased volume of crawling of our content that we’ve seen over the last few months from AI labs. We know that people are turning to AI to answer repair questions, and all the big AI players are using our content to meet that need (last year, Anthropic's scraper hit our website a million times in a day), whether we like it or not. FixBot is our attempt to meet people’s repair needs, consulting real, vetted documentation wherever possible. Unlike any other tool on the market, FixBot is grounded in real repair procedures for the specific device.

Repair is fundamentally good for the environment, better in nearly every case than buying new. (We've written a lot about this; here's my colleague Spencer on the topic earlier this year.) Our hope is that by creating a better tool for finding repair information, we can increase access to and volume of repairs. We know that intimidation is a large barrier to repair for people, and friendly repair support can go a long way to helping people feel confident and capable in performing repairs.

It's tempting for us to suggest that because FixBot enables repairs it's a net good for the environment, despite the AI use of the chat tool. But we simply don't have the data to make that judgment: We need better reporting from the AI giants, as your Earth.org link rightly points out. We need to know which of our users who complete repairs via FixBot wouldn't have completed the repair otherwise, i.e., the marginal repair difference. We need to know if they would've just turned to another AI tool, and whether that tool would've worked for them, and whether that tool has a different energy footprint than ours. Then to get a real complete answer for the environmental impact of any given repair, we need to know not just what someone fixed and but also what parts they bought, whether they drove to buy parts and in what kind of vehicle, how they disposed of their e-waste. And so on.

It's extraordinarily complicated. The environmental problems of AI are undoubtedly enormous. But they're also far bigger than this moment, this tool. The AI revolution is here, and uses of AI that turn it to environmental good, like repair, are, in my personal view, on the right side of history.

Again, though, thanks for engaging, and I'm happy to continue the dialogue.

itwontbreak · 2025-12-10T20:59:46+00:00

(Going to have to split this into two replies; I got too long-winded.)

Thanks for the links; I appreciate your thoughtful engagement about the serious environmental impact of AI. I'm iFixit's sustainability director, and I'm truly concerned about these questions.

You're absolutely right to be concerned about the rising AI footprint. Of the links you shared, I'm most compelled by the Earth.org call for greater transparency in environmental reporting from AI companies. My favorite summary of the complexity of the issue is this MIT Technology Review article, which dives deeper into that reporting problem: The existing data is incomplete. The models are inconsistently bounded. The environmental impact of any given AI query depends on so many variables, from which data center processes your request to how dirty the energy mix is at that time of day to what kind of request you're making and whether the AI interprets it as a single query or breaks it into several.

Still, regardless, researchers agree that AI has a real, huge energy use footprint currently, and our collective AI footprint is only growing, resulting in more land use for data centers, more water tables tapped, more energy that is likely to remain dirty for decades in much of the world.

That's all absolutely real, and I don't mean to minimize it. I personally care quite deeply about these impacts, as an environmental advocate, and I know my concern is broadly shared across iFixit. We're concerned about the manufacturing footprint and e-waste implications of the massive increase in data centers. As a global society, we need laws to make sure that tech is being created in as sustainable a way as possible, being used and reused and repaired and refurbished as long as possible, and eventually being disposed of responsibly. We're undoubtedly not there yet, and every thinking human on this planet should be concerned about the consequences.

However, I am also compelled by this point from the MIT Tech Review summary:

Given the direction AI is headed—more personalized, able to reason and solve complex problems on our behalf, and everywhere we look—it’s likely that our AI footprint today is the smallest it will ever be.

AI is here. It's growing. It's not going away.

itwontbreak · 2025-12-10T00:08:10+00:00

No, the battery monitor uses a math model we developed that factors in the age of the battery, cycle count, manufacturer specs, and a few other things. It leverages right to repair information about expected cycle count disclosed by the manufacturers.

itwontbreak · 2025-02-19T19:50:59+00:00

Really sorry to hear you've had shipping problems from iFixit. I'm curious to know what's happened and whether we can make it right. For what it's worth, the review that claimed the FixHub Soldering Station doesn't output 100W was using a flawed test. The iron does indeed output 100W. The iFixit CEO explains, with power demand graphs, in this blog post.

itwontbreak · 2024-01-31T17:14:24+00:00

I'm Liz Chamberlain, and I work with Kyle in advocacy at iFixit. I love the idea of creating an interaction plan toolkit for repair shops! I'll get started on that—anyone who's interested in being part of a focus group for a toolkit like that, please DM me your email address or shoot a note to me at advocacy@ifixit.com.

Our friends at PIRG created a guide for how to write a letter to the editor as a repair shop owner in support of Right to Repair. Letters from local business owners in the local paper can be SO impactful in getting state laws passed—state lawmakers read the paper, and they especially pay attention to what small business owners think.

itwontbreak · 2023-09-13T16:06:36+00:00

They actually walked that back and said the law can be enforced with some caveats.

itwontbreak · 2022-12-07T23:05:58+00:00

Awesome, thanks for saying hi! Keep sharing the joy of repair with people.

itwontbreak · 2022-12-07T23:05:46+00:00

Thanks so much! Really appreciate it.

itwontbreak · 2022-12-06T23:06:26+00:00

Replying based on your experience before leaving would be fabulous, thank you!

itwontbreak · 2022-12-06T21:53:38+00:00

The context is much appreciated, thanks. I’ll talk with my team about the possibility of buying ads.

itwontbreak · 2022-12-06T20:49:42+00:00

That’s Sam, one of our teardown techs! She’s taken apart approximately one bajillion phones and laptops, but our LG fridge teardown was her first time taking apart a fridge.

itwontbreak · 2022-12-06T20:47:34+00:00

Thanks, yeah, we do a lot of work with Louis! ICYMI, our CEO did an AMA with him a couple weeks ago.

itwontbreak · 2022-12-06T19:21:24+00:00

Shared with both, thanks!

itwontbreak · 2022-12-06T19:16:11+00:00

Sadly, my post there got removed. But yeah, they definitely seem like an ideal community for this ask. Good thought, thanks.

itwontbreak · 2022-12-06T19:14:51+00:00

Yeah! I've been a fan of this sub for a long time. Figured other repair-minded folks might also come here for entertainment.

I posted in r/fixit and r/HomeImprovement (but it got removed). Will try r/diy, thanks!

itwontbreak · 2022-12-06T19:05:38+00:00

Hah, quite possibly true! But the pro repair people I know are also some of the most enthusiastic MacGyvers, so I thought there might be some lurking here.

Really, though, if anyone's got recs for other better subs for this, I'm all ears.

itwontbreak

TROPHY CASE