The First “Device” To Get A iFixIt O out of 10 Repairability Score
iFixit Chief Information Architect Miroslav Djuric says (April 1):
We’ve been accused of favoring one fruit above all others. This ends today. To show some appreciation towards other members of the fruit family, we decided to test the accessibility, repairability, and end-of-life design of the Orange.
The Orange is a fickle fruit. Believed to be the hybrid between a pomelo and a mandarin, we had no luck opening it with a guitar pick, plastic opening tool, tech knife, ruler, pair of tweezers, or even an iSesamo! After almost losing all hope, a tool descended upon us from the repair heavens, with Morgan Freeman’s voice booming throughout our teardown room. We called it the oOpener!
The Orange received a first-ever O out of 10 Repairability Score for a variety of reasons, but mainly because it’s… an orange. Lest you think that we’re biased against oranges, note that users will have to break its outer case in order to open it, the device is impossible to reassemble, and the internal components are filled with acid. Sounds like a bad time all around, if you ask us.
The Orange teardown highlights:
We know some people may have tried the teardown at home with mild to moderate success. They can celebrate their success with an Orange Teardown t-shirt! Or if they’re having technical difficulties with their Orange, they can make sure they’ve identified their Orange correctly, and then visit our Orange Troubleshooting Guide to figure out what’s going on. Or perhaps they just need the right tool for the job.Having no luck with our vast array of poking, prodding, and prying tools, we figure a little more heat might be necessary… But it turns out keeping a heat gun on the same spot for too long will damage the outer layer of the peel beyond repair. If you’re not extremely cautious, you will find yourself in need of a new outer peel.
As an added bonus, the Orange comes with a free accessory, the Orange Peel – an amusing, Slinky-like contraption, guaranteed to deliver hours of fun.
All ten major internal components of this device are easily removable. However, we are worried that they might not go back together as easily as they come apart, a common problem in fruit repair.
Though the Orange’s repairability is highly questionable, we do admire its end-of-life design. It is completely recyclable, compostable, and delicious-able. We hope that devices like this will some day catch the attention of other device manufacturers and help keep electronics out of landfills… unless they are compostable, of course!
Navel Oranges have small, sterile seeds that cannot be used to reproduce more Oranges — a cutting from an existing fruit-bearing tree must be grafted to another tree. This is the most advanced anti-piracy DRM measure we’ve seen, definitively ensuring that Orange owners won’t be able to produce copies of their Orange to share with their friends.
Thanks,
Miroslav Djuric
Chief Information Architect
iFixit
You can check it out at:
http://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/Orange+Teardown/13470/1
