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> "Eventually, most of these connections will likely become wireless." ... I have my doubts. Eventually. Not tomorrow. Not next year. But it will come. If you
by josteink 11y ago
> "Eventually, most of these connections will likely become wireless." ... I have my doubts.
Eventually. Not tomorrow. Not next year. But it will come. If you include the full quote, it becomes in my opinion clearer what he thinks:
> Eventually, most of these connections will likely become wireless, but given the need for power and the expected challenges around delivering wireless power to many devices, it’s clear variations on USB Type-C, particularly Thunderbolt 3.0 and later iterations, will be around for some time to come.
While there are physical limitations to what wireless can do, over the last decades we've had groundbreaking research which repeatedly has increased the BW available to wireless systems by orders of magnitudes.
Why do you think we've hit the peak now and it can't happen again?
> The proliferation of USB Type-C clearly marks the dawn of a great new era of connectivity for our devices, but it may require a bit of homework on your part to fully enjoy it.
Fully agreed on this. In my head USB Type-C was ... just USB Type-C until I read this article.
- coldtea 11y ago>Eventually. Not tomorrow. Not next year. But it will come. Physics and physical limits don't really change with time.
- zardo 11y agoBut naive methods give way to more clever ones.
- coldtea 11y agoYes, but clever methods can't bypass physical limits either. Sometimes that's just it.
- zardo 11y agoBypassing limits is exactly what clever solutions do. We can't break physics, but we can use different methods to solve the same problem. Like wires to get into a room, and a lifi or laser network inside of it, or wireless between the rooms with furniture sized antenna. Or, more likely, something far more clever.
- creshal 11y ago> While there are physical limitations to what wireless can do, over the last decades we've had groundbreaking research which repeatedly has increased the BW available to wireless systems by orders of magnitudes. And they have been outpaced by the bandwidth improvements on wired networking. Why settle for some increase in speed (maybe, assuming you don't have signal quality problems – which only grow worse as adoption increases), when you can have a much larger increase in speed (guaranteed)? Sure, wired doesn't always make sense: Anything that can be sensibly battery powered is a candidate for wireless connectivity. But if you're stringing wires anyway, why not use much more reliable wired networking while you're at it? We're putting power delivery into Ethernet and USB, and Ethernet into HDMI, so we're increasingly not even needing additional wires.
- cm2187 11y agoI am not an adept of wireless because of performance problems but wire consolidation makes a lot of sense. For instance it would make sense for all laptops to have the ethernet connection as well as additional connections going through the power supply. So that a single wire to plug when you go wired and all wireless when on the move. Docking stations sort of do that but you loose the "lap top" ability. I think most people use their laptop in bed or on a couch when not working. And even on a table it's nice to have the wiring underneath the table.
- creshal 11y ago> So that a single wire to plug when you go wired and all wireless when on the move. That's the whole idea behind USB-C with Thunderbolt 3 and USB 3.1, yes.
- cm2187 11y agoThunderbolt can accomodate many protocoles but can it do them at the same time? I.e. drive a 4k monitor, and an ethernet connection, and power the laptop, and connect an external hard drive and printer through USB? To go the power supply hub way you need simultaneity.
- 11y ago