An interview on londonist.com focuses on Matthew Smith, a London resident who’s been repairing broken iPods and giving the devices away to London’s Freecycle community (a system centered around giving an item that’s no longer necessary away or exchanging it rather than disposing of it).
Smith, who began collecting broken iPods when his iPod’s hard drive afailed after he attached it to a magnetic holder in his car, advertised on the Freecycle boards for a few broken iPods in order to get his working again and actually received more iPods than he needed. After repairing the hard drive on his own iPod, he found he could generally mix and match spare parts for other units and give them back to the community while running other chores and errands throughout the day.
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An interview on londonist.com focuses on Matthew Smith, a London resident who’s been repairing broken iPods and giving the devices away to London’s Freecycle community (a system centered around giving an item that’s no longer necessary away or exchanging it rather than disposing of it).
Smith, who began collecting broken iPods when his iPod’s hard drive afailed after he attached it to a magnetic holder in his car, advertised on the Freecycle boards for a few broken iPods in order to get his working again and actually received more iPods than he needed. After repairing the hard drive on his own iPod, he found he could generally mix and match spare parts for other units and give them back to the community while running other chores and errands throughout the day.
“I get a real buzz out of knowing I just made someone’s day and thinking they may be that little bit more trusting of strangers in future. I’m certainly no benevolent millionaire – I have just realised that it’s not money that makes the world go round, it’s working as a team for the benefit of others that does it.”
Smith criticizes Apple’s construction of the hard drive-based iPods, mentioning that the close prozimity of the drive components makes the disks vulnerable to damage (“Hard drives were never meant to be used whilst moving so I find it crazy that the iPod has been marketed as a mobile music player when it’s based around a traditional hard drive system,”) but compliments Apple on its decision to use a flash-based system “that is actually designed to be used on the move” in its iPod Nano units.
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