iFixit News

Tool Abuse: All the Non-Screwing Things You Can Do with a Screwdriver

Charlie Sorrel — Mon, 10 Aug 2026 14:00:00 +0000

Along with the hammer, the screwdriver might be the most abused tool in your toolbox. Heck, a big one can even be used as a hammer in a push. Instead of tut-tutting and telling you to look after your tools (which you totally should btw), today we’re going to look at all the non-screwing things that you can do with a a screwdriver. We’re going to get pretty creative here, but—content warning—things…

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Why Once-Great Brands Are Making Their Products Worse on Purpose

Charlie Sorrel — Fri, 07 Aug 2026 14:02:00 +0000

This will sound familiar: You have a beloved tool/pair of walking boots/kitchen appliance/etc .that you’ve owned since forever. It’s well-made, built to last, but then it breaks or eventually wears out. You replace it with the same model from the same brand, but something’s off. It looks the same, but this time it breaks down after only a year. No, it’s not you. These products have all been…

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Apple Could Give “Obsolete” iPads New Life with This One Weird Trick

Charlie Sorrel — Thu, 06 Aug 2026 20:42:32 +0000

This fall, Apple will cut off millions of iPads from further OS updates. This will leave owners of perfectly-good hardware with no choice but to watch it slowly wither its way to the recycling center. Ideally Apple would support its computers with service updates for much longer, but there’s another way. Apple could fix this without much ongoing effort on its part, and give this still-great…

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Five Million Reasons to Make Peripheral Repair Easier: One Year of Work With Logitech

Brittany McCrigler — Thu, 30 Jul 2026 15:59:00 +0000

A year ago, we wrote that repairability is just the beginning. This year, our work with Logitech put some numbers behind that idea. Logitech repair content on iFixit was viewed more than 5 million times. Spare-parts sales grew ninefold year over year. The three most popular guides now draw around 3,000 views apiece every month. People are looking for ways to keep their gear working.

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The Secrets Behind Samsung’s Privacy Screen

Shahram Mokhtari — Mon, 27 Jul 2026 19:08:50 +0000

The annual smartphone release cycle has become predictably iterative while true hardware innovation has been overshadowed by marketing hype. Apple’s 2025 lineup gave us an uninspired colorway and a regressive redesign that actually hinders battery repairs—a disappointing shift from the repair friendly dual-entry design of the iPhone 14 and the electrically releasing adhesive of the iPhone 16.

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Why Repairability Is So Important During RAMageddon

Charlie Sorrel — Wed, 15 Jul 2026 22:50:51 +0000

Finally some good news from the endless bleakness of RAMageddon: Microsoft has extended Windows 10 support for another year, to October 12th 2027, probably because it’s hard to force people to buy a new RAM-hungry Windows 11 computer when prices are rocketing. If you’re already signed up for Windows 10 Extended Security Updates, you should’ve gotten an email announcing the extension; if not, you’…

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Kindle and Switch Replaceable Batteries Show EU Laws Are (Slowly) Working

Charlie Sorrel — Mon, 13 Jul 2026 17:59:20 +0000

Nintendo and Amazon are putting user-replaceable batteries in the Switch 2 and (possibly) the Kindle. This will not be down to altruism or respect for the buyer, but instead, thanks to EU legislation. And while we don’t yet know Amazon’s intentions, Nintendo’s replaceable-battery versions will only be available in the EU. Bit by bit, Europe’s Right to Repair laws are having their…

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John Deere Settles with the FTC in Massive Win for Farmers

Elizabeth Chamberlain — Wed, 08 Jul 2026 21:03:34 +0000

Today, the Federal Trade Commission and five states settled their antitrust case against John Deere. The deal does something farmers have been demanding for more than a decade, forcing Deere to give farmers and independent repair shops the same repair software and diagnostic access it hands its authorized dealers. Huzzah! For the next ten years, under FTC and state supervision…

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How iPhone Batteries Are Really Made

Manuel Haeussermann — Fri, 03 Jul 2026 08:01:01 +0000

iFixit Begins Developing a Repairability Scoring Standard with NSF

Elizabeth Chamberlain — Fri, 03 Jul 2026 01:58:31 +0000

For more than 15 years, we’ve scored products to help people understand what makes them repairable. But we’re a small team, and there are lots of products in the world; we’ve come to accept that we can’t score them all. Several jurisdictions have been working on repairability scoring efforts: France kicked things off in 2021, and the Joint Research Centre followed. This month…

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