Senior Technical Editor at iFixit
Hi, Jeff Suovanen here. I take stuff apart and write about it—mostly in support of iFixit’s blog, video, advocacy, and professional services efforts. If you’ve read or watched an iFixit teardown in the last nine years, I likely had a hand in it. (Very often, my hands are literally in it.)
I joined iFixit in 2013 as a technical writer, working mainly on repair guides and teardowns. I later helped develop iFixit’s university technical writing project, coaching a few thousand engineering students from over 50 universities through their technical writing coursework. I’ve enjoyed being a guest lecturer and attending academic conferences on technical writing, and helped teach a few of iFixit’s in-house workshops for technical writing instructors.
Experience
If working at iFixit sounds awesome, that’s because it often is—I’m grateful to have been at the right place and time to collaborate on some world-class projects with this team. I’ve been lucky enough to help Greenpeace create its guide to greener electronics, written repair guides for Patagonia, and I increasingly consult on repairability for some of the world’s top hardware engineers.
I’m naturally an introvert and prefer to stay behind the camera rather than in front of it, but sometimes accidents happen. My talking head has appeared on a few broadcast programs and podcasts, like that time we tore down a Magic Leap One. I’ve also appeared briefly in at least one VICE documentary, wherein I badly needed a haircut and hadn’t slept since two dinners ago.
VICE News chased us to Australia for our teardown of the iPhone X.
I do enjoy sharing my photos though, and they frequently pop up in the tech press. That’s one of the really fun aspects of this job—you never know when your work might help a technology journalist explain a battery problem, solve a waterproofing mystery, or break down a new laptop design.
Education
I’m a Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo alum. I’ve got a smattering of degrees and certifications that have precious little to do with my current position, but at least they were expensive.
Ensuring Quality Repair Information on iFixit
The Editorial team works hard to make iFixit the best source for repair. Learn more about the content review process that makes it possible.
Favorite Fixes
I’ve worked on so many cool projects here that it’s hard to pick favorites, but here are a few recent ones:
- Three Former Apple Engineers Helped Us Tear Down Apple Watch Series 7
- How iFixit Built Its Free Medical Database
- Mac Pro 2019 Teardown
Personal Stuff
My wife Zan, seen here in a rare photo that I’m allowed to share with the internet.
Like many folks here, I’ve been fixing things most of my life—cars, computers, time machines. (Wait, my mistake—that last thing happens later.)
I like wrenching on BMWs and then testing my work in the safest way possible, on the racetrack.
In my free time I enjoy distance running, scuba diving, and science fiction.
Where Else to Find Me
I’m allergic to social media, but if you must, you can try contacting me there:
Sure! You can use everything through step 55 as prerequisites for a new guide.
Hall effect sensor for the crank is located right here!
@tomchai We took some measurements and I think you’re right. Good catch! The CR2032 battery from an AirTag is literally too thick for this iMac. Wow. Step has been updated accordingly.
Good eye! Yes, Creative Electron X-rayed the base model, so there are some differences from the mid-range unit in our teardown—mainly cooling hardware and ports.
The only connector I see at that location is the speaker connector—scroll up two steps from here and you’ll find instructions for disconnecting it.
Flickering on an external screen would not be caused by lack of calibration on the built-in display. Apple’s techs are required to perform a calibration step when they replace almost any part, but it’s not necessary in order for a new display to work—We’ve tested this many times. Even the term “calibration” can be misleading here, as often all they’re doing is verifying the repair with Apple’s servers so that the repair shop can get paid by Apple for completing the repair.
Normally when we see problems on both internal and external displays, I’d suspect a bad GPU, but it’s odd that it happened immediately after your repair. Does the external monitor flicker regardless of which port it’s plugged into? Have you tried them all? If so, I’d probably move your question to the Answers forum and maybe run through the standard troubleshooting checklist before going further. Good luck!
iFixit teardowns show the highlights inside new hardware and provide an early read on repairability. They’re usually published within 24 hours of the official product launch. Writing detailed repair guides takes more time, and those are published separately.
It links you to the main device page for the Xbox One, which includes links to all of our repair manuals, as well as a link to this teardown.
Hi Chunglin! This is the only teardown iFixit will create for this particular iPad. We’ll also post repair guides at some point, as always.
Instructions for replacing the adhesive seals are linked in the guide (Step 19). I wouldn’t count on your phone being waterproof after a repair, but a phone from 2017-2018 likely won’t be particularly water-resistant anymore, anyway. Those seals tend to degrade over time.
Use the largest bit that fits snugly and fills the screw head. In general, these guides are written for iFixit tool users, so if you’re using some other brand/kit, you’ll have to be a bit more careful about driver selection. The sizes are not very well standardized.
Sayfa 1 / 87
Sonraki