Julia Bluff

Stories I'm Proud Of.

From 2012 to 2018, I worked at iFixit — the world’s largest online repair manual for everything. During that time, the company grew from a small startup into a global voice in the repair movement. As lead writer, I helped establish iFixit’s editorial presence and define its brand voice.

My writing appeared in Slate, The Atlantic, WIRED, Harvard Business Review, and Popular Mechanics. I also worked closely on the Right to Repair campaign in partnership with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, helping shape the narrative around sustainable electronics and responsible consumerism.

Together, our tiny writing team published hundreds of articles and blogs. Many of them laid the foundation for real change. When we began writing about Right to Repair, few people knew what that even was. Today, all 50 states have introduced some form of Right to Repair legislation. Eight have passed laws.

Here are a few stories I’m especially proud of.

WIRED •

You Bought That Gadget, and Dammit, You Should Be Able to Fix It!le to Fix Itle to Fix It

Michael Oberdick owns two small gadget repair shops in northwestern Ohio. He and his technicians spend their days at iOutlet replacing busted screens, repairing battered motherboards, and generally making life easier for people who’ve done something stupid with their gadgets. He found this job far easier just five years ago, when he started repairing phones for friends. Back then, anyone with basic tools, a little patience, and an instruction manual could fix just about anything.But these days,...
WIRED •

We Can't Let John Deere Destroy the Very Idea of Ownershipship

It’s official: John Deere and General Motors want to eviscerate the notion of ownership. Sure, we pay for their vehicles. But we don’t own them. Not according to their corporate lawyers, anyway.In a particularly spectacular display of corporate delusion, John Deere---the world's largest agricultural machinery maker ---told the Copyright Office that farmers don’t own their tractors. Because computer code snakes through the DNA of modern tractors, farmers receive “an implied license for the life o...
iFixit •

A Design Defect Is Breaking a Ton of iPhone 6 Pluses

People all over the world mail their broken iPhones to microsoldering specialist Jessa Jones. Aided by powerful microscopes and precision soldering irons, experts like Jessa pluck tiny chips off logic boards, swap them for new ones, and resurrect devices over which Apple’s Genius Bar would say a eulogy.

Jessa can fix practically anything. But these days, she spends most of her time fixing just one thing. Because every single month, more and more iPhone 6 and (especially) 6 Plus devices show up a...
WIRED •

New High-Tech Farm Equipment Is a Nightmare for Farmers

I squatted down in the dirt and took stock of my inadequate tools. Over my left shoulder a massive John Deere tractor loomed. I came here to fix that tractor. So far, things weren’t going as planned.I’m a computer programmer by training, and a repairman by trade. Ten years ago, I started iFixit, an online, DIY community that teaches people to repair what they own. Repair is what I do, and that I was being rebuffed by a tractor was incredibly frustrating.I tossed my wrenches and screwdrivers. The...
WIRED •

E-Book Legal Restrictions Are Screwing Over Blind People

In late 2012, a 14-year-old high school student stood in front of a camera and began to read. Chris Nusbaum’s voice was calm and steady. And so were his hands, which ran smoothly over lines of braille as he made a personal appeal to Amazon---maker of the most widely-used e-reader in the world.“My class has just been assigned a project for which we must use information in the class’s textbook. Every student has a Kindle, which has the textbook loaded on to it. All of the sighted students can easi...
The Atlantic •

Fix Things, Never Force It: Lessons From Grandpa

My grandfather was a man of action.

When he was just a teenager he manned an aircraft carrier in the Pacific theater of World War II, then he served as a flight engineer during the Korean conflict. Decades later, when time and exertion had weathered his body, he showed us his favorite photo from the war: A plane that crashed on landing, but just managed to avoid sliding off the deck of the ship. He helped put out the fire.

After Korea, he was chief facilities engineer during the height of the...