I’m Rupert, a junior (2004) repair enthusiast👨🔧 (and cyclist 🚴♂️, any good repair tech needs a good workout 👍💪) from France who has worked on several iPhones (several 4(s), a 5s, and a 6s), a tablet, several unibody MacBooks (sometimes Pro), and a few PC laptops along the way.
I clean 🧼 🧽 everything that comes in, because I’ve had several laptops with an awful cigarette 🚬 stench needing to be removed, notably on a flithy 2010 plastic MacBook (very repairable but not terribly durable, to the surprise of no one who has worked on these machines).
The repair I’m proudest of is when I had to fix a broken microUSB port on a Sony Xperia M2 Aqua, unfortunately soldered to the motherboard. I went to a local nonprofit electronics and home appliance repair workshop (atelier-soude.fr) where the awesome folks over there and got that port swapped out, and was relatively smooth considering my lack of experience in that kind of repair.
I’ve watched iFixit’s and Louis Rossmann’s videos on YouTube, and I must agree with the fact that repair is in fact safe to carry out, and you don’t need to know that the first two Surface Laptops were terribly designed, literally requiring destruction to open. My dad had his own misgivings about the design, as a former textile engineer, predicting that the fancy fabric would get disgusting with skin oils.
Since my 16th birthday, I have been using iFixit’s Pro Tech Toolkit, and I highly appreciate its 64 bits included (was that on purpose? 😂) and the suction handle that got me into the post-2011 iPhones that I worked on. I also spend tons of time reading an impossibly large number of iFixit articles and have used their guides since I’ve heard of them.
I adore the social aspect of repair, one of my friends is actually an automotive and motorcycle repair freak I guess you could say 😂, and I’ve time and time again pitched in to help my family’s hardware issues and upgrades sorted. With that being said, I really would like to be close to more people who are fully interested in repair.
Happy fixing, everyone!