For years, I relied on Apple hardware, and had to buy my Powerbooks in pairs, because one of them was always broken and had to be sent back to Applecare for repair. After I switched to Thinkpads, I was able to buy IBM (then Lenovo’s) global, onsite, next-day hardware replacement warranty, and so I was able to just have one laptop at a time, and use an old one for 24-36 hours while I waited for a technician to travel to my home or hotel room to fix my machine.
And:
The other day, my wife said that she thought that between my operating system (Ubuntu, a flavor of GNU/Linux) and hardware (the Framework), I was having more technical problems than I used to have with my Macs. I was shocked – but after we talked it over, I realized she got that impression because when something goes wrong with my laptop, I can fix it, so I spend a bunch of time tinkering with things, rather than bringing it to an Apple Store and switching to a backup computer.
Yeah, I barely want to fix my software, and I definitely don’t want to fix my hardware. I’ve done it, on occasion, whenever possible, but the brief moment of satisfaction that ensues doesn’t make up for the hours spent figuring out what to do and the anxiety of fucking up things even more.
But I do believe people should be allowed to do it if they need, want, and are able to. I love ifixit.com—I just don’t want to have to use it.