19 ms·

The impossible dream of USB-C

635 points by okket 9y ago

protomyth 9y ago
But due to their potential bandwidth demands, computers can’t have very many USB-C ports Isn't this more a function of Intel product differentiation and closing off their bus to others? I get the feeling the killer server ARM is going to be a bandwidth monster.
- revelation 9y ago
  Mostly it's the authors ignorance of the standard. Just because you can connect a display to an USB-C port doesn't mean that is taking up USB bandwidth or requires the CPU to do more work than previously. It's just more ports integrated into one.
  - KirinDave 9y ago
    I'm not sure why you're being downvoted. It's pretty clear Marco doesn't understand this nuance.
    - vetinari 9y ago
      If you want TB3 support on each USB port, you will run out of PCIe lanes available on the CPU. Just with basic support for 2 PCIe lanes per port and 4 ports, you are at 8 already. Similarly with running DisplayPort to each port, your GPU doesn't have unlimited number of encoders.
  - andreasley 9y ago
    If there's a port, there has to be sufficient bandwidth available, regardless if anything is connected and what that might be. USB 3.1 Gen 2 supports 10Gbps, so 4 ports means 40Gbps. If it's a MacBook Pro, it has to support Thunderbolt 3 on all ports. That's 160Gbps for 4 ports, or 16 PCIe lanes. That happens to be exactly the number of PCIe lanes the Intel i7-7920HQ CPU has.
    - deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]
  - redial 9y ago
    It seems to me you are the one who is confused. There are two cases, (1) where the port is directly connected to the cpu and (2) where the port is connected to a 'hub' that is connected to the cpu. He's clearly talking about 1, which is by far the most common scenario, certainly on Macs, and in that case it does require bandwidth and CPU cycles to run at full speed. If you also want that usb-c port to support thunderbolt and all its features you need even more pcie lanes and even access to the gpu.
cbhl 9y ago
USB-A had all of these compatibility concerns too, when it first came out. I remember having a Gateway All-in-One with only two USB-A ports in '98. You had to worry about USB 1 versus USB 2, and some devices wouldn't get enough power through a hub, and so forth. I'm really looking forward to seeing where USB-C is in two or three years.
- jseliger 9y ago
  I was going to write something similar. This looks like most port transitions. Right now everything is a mess. In five years it probably won't be.
  - wmf 9y ago
    He does address this at the end. Also, a cable that doesn't support Thunderbolt and 100W charging will probably always be cheaper than one that does, and thus we should expect suboptimal cables to keep being sold.
    - damnyou 9y ago
      It will also be lighter and thinner. Try replacing "suboptimal" with "Pareto optimal" in your everyday life. It made a positive difference for me.
- nebulous1 9y ago
  I think his point is that it was a missed opportunity to learn from those exact mistakes
  - dom0 9y ago
    Things like passive hubs working poorly were not in the spec. This stuff is.
- colejohnson66 9y ago
  I’m too young to have experienced the transition, but were there cables that could fry your computer? https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2016/02/google-engineer-finds-usb-type-c-cable-thats-so-bad-it-fried-his-chromebook-pixel/ https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2016/02/google-engineer-find...
maltalex 9y ago
TL;DR - USB-C is a connector and not all ports/cables/hubs support all of its features and modes. So not everything that can be connected using a USB-C will work the same way, or even at all. - Due to their potential bandwidth demands, computers can’t have very many USB-C ports - USB-C will be phased out and replaced before settling down
- ghaff 9y ago
  One of the folks involved in the original USB standards work once told me that the lack of reversibility (or at least a more obvious indicator of orientation) was the main thing they got wrong with the initial standard.
  - HocusPocusLocus 9y ago
    There are huge indicators. People just jam it till it works. IE. No user testing.
    - on_and_off 9y ago
      Unfortunately some devices don't respect the indicator :( Most people don't know about it anyway, making the c port reversible was a good decision.
      - digi_owl 9y ago
        The port itself is nice, is in the cube of data rate, power rate, port type that is the problem. You can have A ports that deliver 20V and 3.1 data rates, and C ports that deliver only 5V and 2.0 data rates, and they are both valid according to spec.
    - ino 9y ago
      I have a cable that has the indicator on the wrong side.
      - erik_seaberg 9y ago
tw04 9y ago
So... USB-C is bad because cable vendors haven't come up with a good way to easily identify what features a given cable supports? Which could be done extremely easily by things like color coding... exactly what we had to do with USB Type-A ports. I'll never understand articles like this - let's not standardize on a form factor because not every single application of that form factor has the same requirements???
- brazzledazzle 9y ago
  I think (a big part of) the point is that it's frustrating. And it really is.
  - tw04 9y ago
    Not really. The cable thing is easily solved - don't buy cheap cables. If you ever plan on using USB-C for thunderbolt, only buy cables capable of thunderbolt. As for devices - I guess I'd say know what you're buying? How is it any different than the fact I have to know that some mini-displayport ports can do thunderbolt and some can't? Some cables can and some can't? I mean... Belkin has already started putting the thunderbolt icon on the cables they sell that support it. This isn't anywhere near as complicated as he's claiming. The only gray area is people buying the cheapest possible cable they can find on Amazon then acting shocked when they get what they paid for.
    - wmf 9y ago
      The only gray area is people buying the cheapest possible cable they can find... That's 90% of people though.
    - on_and_off 9y ago
      Not that easily solved. Costly cables are usually better but you don't have any warranty. You can use bensong leung tests to find a good one but need to hope that they have not silently changed the cables since his test. When you buy a new device, you have no idea of the capabilities of the cable that comes with it. So you need to remember whether it uses PC or QC or just always use it's provided cable. All in all we are still far from "let's take any usb-c cable and connect it to an usb-c device". It is too bad, it is a very nice dream.
eugenv 9y ago
At least it's reversible, so that's a step forward.
HocusPocusLocus 9y ago
Sounds like he's complaining about a labeling issue on cables and ports. The different USB-C capabilities is a feature, but the lack of labels is a huge bug. Who wants to fix? Make a Web 2.0 website with photo-realistic 3D renders of your solution, then take it on the road.
- toyg 9y ago
  Two words: washing labels. Just have a rough industry agreement of which features should be represented and what their symbols should be, then put them on connectors (which are pretty long, there is plenty of usable space) and on packaging and listings.
  - mchahn 9y ago
    > Two words: washing labels. Great Idea. However, I had to write software one time that had all the possible washing symbols as input. There were 30 or 40 possible symbols. No human could possibly know all of them.
    - toyg 9y ago
      Yeah I know, I even downloaded an iOS app to read them ("Laundry Day"); but in practice I noticed most people just learn the one or two they care about and ignore the rest - because if you don't own a tumble dryer, you don't really care about the symbol for that. So if you care about Thunderbolt 2, you would look only for that icon, ignoring the rest; power might have a scaled one like washing temperature, and so on. As usual though, the problem is that the industry has to come together to agree these symbols, be it formally through the USB consortium or informally in some other venue.
tammer 9y ago
I think these are actually the most minor problems with the USB-C vision. The VAST majority of consumers will never encounter a thunderbolt device, and the ones that do can be expected to understand the cable difference. What is far more of an issue for the standard is the established network effect. USB-A has become so commonplace that its built into our furniture, and micro-USB is a legally defined requirement for device charging in some areas. These foundational forces will prove to be a massive deterrent to USB-C uptake, and far more of a risk to the vision than multiple cable types that are clearly labeled! But, the bright side of this I think is Apple's adoption of the Qi charging standard. Its clear that an evolutional jump to wireless charging will entail new technology, so I see Qi taking up the "one way to charge everything" vision.
- hvjackson 9y ago
  I agree, the USB-A form factor is by far the most widely used peripheral connector in the history of computers. The shift from USB-A to USB-C is without precedent. Practically every mouse, keyboard, printer, camera, charger, and external drive made in the last 20 years has used USB-A. Practically every car in the last 10 years has USB-A. Every hotel room, every airplane, every DC power converter. There are still millions (billions?) of devices shipped every year with USB-A. We are nowhere near the inflection point.
  - freehunter 9y ago
    Luckily space exists for devices using USB-A and devices using USB-C, and making cables with A at one end and C at the other is trivial enough that many cables exist like this. Two compatible cable standard is easy to handle. The hard part comes when you have USB-A, USB-C, Lightning, Micro-USB, and Mini-USB all competing. Trying to keep enough of each type of cable on hand gets to be pricy.
    - digi_owl 9y ago
      Cables that are hell bent on breaking something, because of the damned resistors everyone gets wrong.
tschellenbach 9y ago
With all the hubs I still can't get my 2017 Macbook Pro 15inch to reliably run an external monitor. (it lags every now and then). So far I didn't find out yet which of the components is actually causing it. Crazy how complex it is.
- ScottBurson 9y ago
  I don't see how lag could be caused by a cable or hub. It's not like a remote desktop or VNC connection, where what flows over the cable is commands to change a stored image; there is no stored image -- every pixel is re-sent for every frame. Any lag must therefore be internal to the laptop. If you have an image on the monitor, and it isn't scrambled and the colors are right, the cable and hub are working.
  - ricardobeat 9y ago
    You’d be surprised. I was just last week forced to use a USB-C-to-DisplayPort cable, instead of a straightforward DP to DP cable to get a 4K monitor to work. Using the latter, the computer thought everything was fine but the screen flickered like a CRT, horizontal splits and all, and went black every 3s. There are so many layers involved I don’t even want to think about it, and am just happy it worked...
  - dom0 9y ago
    On a marginal connection source/sink of a DP link will re-train which interrupts main link operation, causing brief lags in display. If the connection is even worse you'll get the usual black-picture-for-a-few-seconds dance.
- cjcampbell 9y ago
  I haven't run into any issues yet, but I may have just been lucky on my hub/cable selections. What type of video connection?
  - tschellenbach 9y ago
    Tried display port and hdmi so far. These hubs (https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B074TD1CRZ/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o03_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1 https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B074TD1CRZ/ref=oh_aui_deta... https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B06VVNN8XV/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o05_s01?ie=UTF8&psc=1 https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B06VVNN8XV/ref=oh_aui_deta...) both on this screen https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00YD3DBOC/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o01_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1 https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00YD3DBOC/ref=oh_aui_deta... It's probably something unrelated to the hubs. Who knows though :) Many moving pieces.
chx 9y ago
I wrote up the fun that is USB C at https://superuser.com/a/1200112/41259 https://superuser.com/a/1200112/41259 . How big a mess USB C is? Check this note from Plugable: "We have had several confirmed cases where lowering the Power Output of the internal Wi-Fi adapter to 75% in Dell XPS models has helped with USB-C disconnect behavior." Also, while you can get a small USB C to dual DisplayPort MST hub http://a.co/hyXGdBA http://a.co/hyXGdBA and also you can get a small USB C to DisplayPort adapter with USB C power passthrough http://a.co/1KE2imb http://a.co/1KE2imb you can't get an USB C MST hub with power passthrough in a single, small, relatively cheap device. You need an expensive, quite huge device like the ThinkPad USB C dock to get this functionality. It seems as if every USB C accessory maker took a blood oath on hardwiring a HDMI converter to the second port of their MST hub. (Yes, taking a USB C to DP converter and an ordinary MST hub is a cheap solution, of course, but it's not elegant at all especially because both insist on using cords, creating a mess.) Also, there have been laptop chargers with 65W or 90W on the laptop side and one or perhaps even two USB charging ports, if you are real lucky then 2.4A each. Now that both your laptop and phone charges via USB C you'd think you could get an AC adapter with two USB C ports and perhaps a few USB A thrown in for good measure. Dream on. The highest wattage adapter I found with two USB C ports is 55W, it doesn't even charge a single laptop, it's all 5V. There's a well known ;) brand called LVSun which sells a 80W charger which can do a non USB C laptop + USB C phone (or a USB C laptop + a non USB C phone) plus it has a few USB A ports as well. Still, it's not two USB C ports.
randyrand 9y ago
"There’s usually no way to tell whether a given USB-C device requires Thunderbolt, either — you just need to plug it in and see if it works." Or how about something called google? Who are these people plugging random devices into their computers that they know nothing about?
- 0x6877 9y ago
  Most tech users... not every user is as tech savvy as your average HN reader and able to google these things, and that’s the issue.
  - julian_1 9y ago
    The more technically competent you are - the more you want to be focused on your domain specialization - syadmin, cloud, development, devops, networking, PM etc. Why would any professional wish to waste time learning the complex compatibility matrix of USB-C consumer cabling?
    - 0x6877 9y ago
      Exactly. Why should anyone? You should just be able to look at the cable and know what it does. Which as the article points out is not the current situation. The person I replied to stated that googling it is the answer but not everyone is that competent.
- jotm 9y ago
  Don't even bother... if you're not designing for morons, you're not selling anything these days, apparently.
  - throw5427 9y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Design_of_Everyday_Things https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Design_of_Everyday_Things https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don%27t_Make_Me_Think https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don%27t_Make_Me_Think
  - 9y ago
bluedino 9y ago
The state of adapters is atrocious. Apple couldn’t even release a good one to go with their flagship products. Take the USB-C to HDMI adapter. The USB port is useless for connecting to external drives. When I plug it into my MacBook one of three things happens: 1 - nothing 2 - it works at USB 2.0 speeds 3 - it erratically works for a minute or two then locks up my laptop Meanwhile, the plain USB-C to USB adapter works perfectly.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
cjcampbell 9y ago
Since I got over the hurdle of buying cables and adapters, I've been mostly happy with USB-C. The one lingering concern is actually mechanical. Many of the cables/dongles are long and skinny relative to the tiny metal connector, placing a fair amount of torque on the port. A number of the cables I've used are poorly fitting as well, exacerbating the mechanical strain. A good example of this problem is the Yubi-4C. The connector protrudes about half a mm from the port and it has enough play to wiggle up/down/left/right. Having had to replace the logic board and I/O boards on my 2016 MBP 15 within 3 months due to port damage, I get a bit nervous when I notice fit problems like this. Aside from outright damaging the ports, poorly built cables seem to wreak havoc on the mechanism that grips cables on Apple machines. Prior to the board replacement, the Apple power cables would gradually come loose by their own weight. Fortunately, the Geniuses did agree that this was a problem and replaced the top case along with the guts of my computer.
- ohazi 9y ago
  We'll probably have to wait a while to see how it fares longer term, but so far I actually prefer the USB-C physical connector to Micro USB. I'm not entirely sure whether I prefer it over USB-A, but I also prefer it over an HDMI or full-size DisplayPort connector.
- mchahn 9y ago
  I've broken several motherboards and many cables over the years. It drives me crazy. The USB-C is the worst. I'm on my third cable now. At least I finally figured out to make sure I get USB-C chargers with removable cables. Now I only have to replace the cable, which I've done twice in the last month. The Dell XPS 13, which I'm getting in a week or so, has both a proprietary power jack and supports USB-C charging. I'm very happy that I won't be breaking many more USB-C cables.
  - KitDuncan 9y ago
    Dells proprietary charger is the worst. They have a cable dedicated to insuring the use of original chargers, which appears to be especially prone to breakage. If it does, your XPS won't charge anymore, but it still gets power. I managed to repair my charger, but it was a real clusterfuck.
cletus 9y ago
I'll go further than this. USB-C isn't misguided, problematic or questionable. It's insanity. Take a given cable and there's a number of dimensions you need to considered: - Supported power standards (none, USB, various other wattages and standards) - Supported bandwidth. I think some don't even support data transfer (which might include the USB-C cable that comes with the Apple Macbook charger) - Supported modes (USB, Thunderbolt, DisplayPort?) There's no colour scheme that can adequately handle all the possible variations. But there are other problems: it makes no sense to have all 4 ports on a 15" Macbook Pro (for example) support power. You only need one port to charge with. I think I read that not all the ports on the 13" Macbook Pro are the same (in terms of capabilities). This is just strikes me as a (hollow) victory for principle ("one port/cable to rule them all") over pragmatism. This always reminds me of the quote: a foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of small minds. This whole thing is expensive, unnecessary, user-unfriendly and confusing (to the average user).
- petercooper 9y ago
  You only need one port to charge with. Different strokes. Being able to charge on either side is one of the biggest usability wins of the new MBP to me.
  - cletus 9y ago
    And this is the same Macbook Pro that for reasons that I can't fathom moved the headphone jack to the right side despite every (single) headphone cable going to the left can. Go figure.
    - mdonahoe 9y ago
      Enjoy that headphone jack while it lasts!
    - wallacoloo 9y ago
      > every (single) headphone cable going to the left can. FWIW a number of studio headphones support plugging in a cable to either can rather than restricting you to just the left one, if you want to go that route. V-moda sells a few pairs like this and denotes the feature as "dual inputs".
amluto 9y ago
> And, of course, there’s usually no way to tell at a glance whether a given cable, charger, battery, or device supports USB-C PD or at what wattages. Forget wattage -- voltage is also a big deal. Want to charge a Dell laptop? You need 20V. Charger support for PD at 20V is somewhat related to wattage, but it's easy to find 40-odd watt chargers that can't supply 20V. And there is usually nothing in the specs that tells you this.
- colejohnson66 9y ago
  Is there any reason the spec couldn’t say all cables deliver 5V and the recieving end converts that to what it needs? Because from my understanding on electronics, if you double the voltage, you half the amperage. So supply 5V@20A and let the recieving end convert that to 20V@5A
  - SomeHacker44 9y ago
    Less current usually means less heat generated in the wires and so you can use smaller copper wires. Higher voltage requires better insulation on the wires. Altogether I think it's a good idea to use 20V at 5A for 100W rather than 20A at 5V. You will get much more heat and voltage loss at 20A for the same size wire.
  - aidenn0 9y ago
    Cables are limited by both current and voltage. The thickness of the copper limits the current, and the thickness of the insulation limits the voltage. 20A is a massive amount of current and won't be easily carried by anything flexible (the wires in the wall of your house are only rated for 15A, and they are quite bulky). 20V on the other hand isn't that high and needs very little insulation.
mtgx 9y ago
The USB guys should have never allowed so many standards live within "one" standard. It may be better for the OEMs, especially as they both save money on ports and get to mislead customers into thinking they may get that fast version of USB-C, when they really won't. But so many standards acting as one is very confusing to consumers.
pasbesoin 9y ago
If they were going to engage in this, they should have made clear and authoritative capabilities markings on the equipment a required part of the standard. And, as others mentioned, I also worry about torque and stress on the port, particularly in mobile scenarios.
Decade 9y ago
The core problem is the large number of options. When USB-C was announced and I saw the pin-outs, my immediate thought was, “This is going to be a support nightmare.” I should have written that down, so I could point at it as proof of my genius. :P But I didn’t know what a garbage fire USB-PD is. I was thinking of Alternate Mode. Alternate Mode is what enables Thunderbolt 3 on USB-C. We already had an alternate mode for USB: MHL. Which divides HDMI ports between plain HDMI ports and HDMI ports that support MHL. The Alternate Mode multiplies the number of ways displays can connect to video sources via USB. Not to mention what everybody else has commented on. All these incompatible options are using the same connector. That’s obviously confusing to users and frustrating to support personnel.
- SomeStupidPoint 9y ago
  I just don't understand how anyone thought going from "if it fits, it works" to having to know compatability sets was going to end well. It's against recommend practice on such topics, for what I think are obvious reasons.
- digi_owl 9y ago
  That, and allowing OEMs to decide port, data rates, and power delivery spec individually. In particular as we have a rudimentary power spec in the 3.1 "data" spec, involving resistors in the cables(?!), and a separate power delivery spec that goes above and beyond the 3.1 power stuff to define anything up to 20V at multiple As. Frankly to me there seems to have been a initial C port design that was a "simple" mechanical reversible implementation of the existing 3.0 wiring. And then someone decided that rather than simply have the pins being mechanically doubled (either in plug or in port) they could make each be an individual wire and run even more stuff through the port. And thus we get Alternate Mode that can carry just about anything the OEMs dream up...
woah 9y ago
You could write a blog post called “the impossible dream of Ethernet” and agonize about the fact that there are many different network protocols.
- freehunter 9y ago
  The problem set of computing technologies in 1983 is a bit different from that of 2017 though.
- justinator 9y ago
  Can we? In a,"consumer" role I've never plugged an ethernet cable into my computer only to find out I got the wrong type of thing for this particular doodad, then lament about things in the comments of a shopping cart site. It kinda just worked.
- nayuki 9y ago
  What parts of Ethernet/networking cause confusion and incompatibility? Please name them specifically.
  - rocqua 9y ago
    - PoE - hubs vs switches (old issue) - cat5, cat5e cat6 cat7 - 100Mbps vs 1Gbps (there are still commercial 100Mbps products for sale) - The horror that used to be crossover cables before auto-detection.
    - greedo 9y ago
      Hubs and switches are not an issue, nor are the various ethernet terminations standards. Same with speed. Users by an Ethernet cable, 99% of the time it'll be suitable for gigE (and thus suitable for 100Mb/sec down to 10Mb/sec).
    - nayuki 9y ago
      Power over Ethernet: I haven't studied this one, so I'll assume it has some subtleties involved. Hubs vs. switches: Hubs are awful (have used one), burn them with prejudice. Collisions bring everything down to 1 Mb/s. And hubs are disallowed in gigabit anyway, due to no CSMA/CD. Category cables: USB has different cables too, and at least Ethernet didn't change the number of conductor wires. But the biggest difference is that Ethernet cables are often in walls or inaccessible places, whereas USB cables are user-replaceable. 100 Mb/s vs. 1 Gb/s: One problem I noticed is that a link might start at 1Gb/s, but after many weeks a momentary error (e.g. power blip) makes the link drop to 100Mb/s or even 10Mb/s and does not automatically recover to the higher speed without manually replugging. IIRC USB doesn't drop down to a lower speed in this manner. Crossover cables: IIRC if you are using purely switches (no hubs), you will never use crossover cables. Other than that, pervasive MDI/MDI-X has silently solved the problem. Though I wish the standard didn't create this problem in the first place. I do appreciate the fact that Ethernet treats nodes as peers. Whereas USB is based on a tree rooted at the master and the master must poll devices to ask them to transfer data. This tidy idea gets into trouble when, for example, a phone can be either a host (OTG) or a client. Also it is impossible to directly share USB devices between two hosts (e.g. a webcam accessible to two computers simultaneously).
sneak 9y ago
At least it fails open, to the common baseline. “can plug in, play audio, sync at usb2.0 speeds, and charge slowly”. Compare and contrast 30 pin dock/lightning.
Roritharr 9y ago
Two years ago i saw this coming and got pummeled for saying so: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9645013#9645650 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9645013#9645650 Ironically since then i've just made Thunderbolt 3 a requirement for all company laptops and the whole company, mac and windows gets to use the same dongles, chargers and even dockingstations, which I count as a win.
- mleiphamellis 9y ago
  If you don’t mind sharing, I am very eager to know which cross platform dock you settled on!
  - Roritharr 9y ago
    CalDigit TS3
glasz 9y ago
the most brilliant thing about this: apple sacrificed magsafe for the clusterfuck that usb-c is.
ngcc_hk 9y ago
Whilst it raise good issues, thunderbolt are shown on computer and cable.
osteele 9y ago
Perhaps a similar simplification can be applied to NEMA connectors https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NEMA_connector https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NEMA_connector, to reduce the number of extension cords and add thrills to our daily lives.
exabrial 9y ago
A lot of the problems seems to be implementation... Apple's quality and value has done nothing but nose-dive, while they focus on "impossibly useful" things like the touch bar. How removing ports is a "feature" on a "professional" line or laptops still baffles me.
flatfilefan 9y ago
The nice thing about standards is that you have so many to choose from. Andrew S. Tanenbaum Computer Networks, 2nd ed., p. 254.
markcerqueira 9y ago
It's not perfect (it may even be terrible) but I can charge my computer, my phone, and my Nintendo Switch with it which is a huge improvement over the last generation of cable mayhem.
marichards 9y ago
This reminds me of abstract classes
myrandomcomment 9y ago
Just went from MacBook Pro to MacBook (fly 120k miles a year). Got Apple 4K (LG) monitor. Disc are USB2 from monitor as is Ethernet. Damn thing does not wake from sleep with USB keyboard. I had an LG 21:9 34” display with thunderbolt drives, network. The 4K monitor is a great picture but 21” is crap. Apple just put thunderbolt in the MacBook please. USB3 can die. Happy with physical interface, rest is crap.
tobias__ 9y ago
USB-C feels like the dynamically typed programming analog of the cable world
crispinb 9y ago
It's so confusing, to ensure compatibility a consumer might be tempted to just buy everything from one manufacturer. This would be very upsetting for Apple, I imagine. Proprietariness by stealth?
plaidfuji 9y ago
New MacBook Pro user here: the four USB-C (+ stereo mini audio jack) port configuration doesn't bother me as much as I thought it would. It's nice that I can plug the power cable in on either side of the laptop. One almost inevitably needs some kind of display dongle unless you have both HDMI and VGA on board (and VGA is an ugly port, let's be honest), although I'll say the lack of native HDMI is a pain point for me. But also, if I'm using the laptop without power, I now have 4 ports available, which is more than enough.
- BoorishBears 9y ago
  Another new MacBook Pro user here: The two ports the 13" model came with are not enough. And the official Apple USB C to HDMI/USB adapter charges slower through the passthrough than a direct connection, meaning if I'm low on battery I need to dedicate a USB port to charging. My monitor at home (XR382CQK) supports USB C and that's ok, it charges, does video, and acts as a hub via one cable. The problem is the world hasn't had time to embrace USB C. I'd gladly trade my old setup of needing two cables (one Magsafe + one Thunderbolt) for not needing a dongle literally everywhere else I use my laptop with an external display.
chrisBob 9y ago
I am the only one at work with the new MBP and I get frequent questions about it and the ports. I usually tell them that I firmly believe USB-C is the way of the future, but alas I live in the present.
lytedev 9y ago
I thought the entire point was to have _cables_ that work everywhere, which is my preference. I think the ports themselves can and should do different things - even my USB-A ports on my laptop have little icons beside them indicating their purpose or capabilities. The point is to not have to keep many dozen different cables on hand for everything.
- lmm 9y ago
  That part doesn't work either though. There are at least four different types of cable (3.1-speed, 3.2-speed, high wattage, and thunderbolt)
  - colejohnson66 9y ago
    Regarding the 3.1-speed: Is there any rational explanation for “USB 3 5GB” being renamed to “USB 3.1 gen 1 5GB” and “USB 3.1 10GB” being renamed to “USB 3.1 gen 2 10GB”?
    - wmf 9y ago
      That was probably done to protect the companies selling "obsolete" 3.0 devices by giving them a "free upgrade" to 3.1.
clebio 9y ago
This is the sort of well-written, detailed reporting that I believe to be true, but which ought to have citations for each claim. Of course, cataloging and adding those sources would mean the article takes a lot longer to write and publish.
- flatfilefan 9y ago
  If you ask me he should actually set up a proper crowdsourced database of all those cables and cases. ... 3. Profit!
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
rocky1138 9y ago
Sorry, but what exactly is wrong with USB A and micro USB? I've never understood why USB type-C was a thing. You can get 3.1 speeds on the old connector.
- aidenn0 9y ago
  1) Obviously USB-C is smaller than full-size A jacks. 2) Micro-USB type A never really caught on; I'm not sure there ever was a super-speed version of it 3) Super-Speed micro type-B is also much larger than USB-C 4) USB-C can optionally carry PCIe and/or Display Port 5) USB-C is reversible along all axes; either end goes into the computer flipped in either direction, same on device.
mjcohen 9y ago
I have an Asus C302CA chromebook and got a USB-A hub for it (https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01M59IOAW/ref=oh_aui_search_detailpage?ie=UTF8&psc=1 https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01M59IOAW/ref=oh_aui_sear...). It only works for storage on one of the two USB-C ports. I was about to return it when I thought of trying the other port.
ebrandell 9y ago
Dongle life. I hate to think that USB-C will become obsolete so quickly, but hate it even more that I'm required to use it right now...
zecken 9y ago
Strongly disagree with the article, it seems the author is confused about the internal hardware. The actual pin connections within all USB Type-C cables are the same -- no matter if they are shipped with a product that uses Thunderbolt, Displayport, or any other standard. The only variance cable to cable (and this exists on existing micro cables as well) is on things like shielding, AWG, and ferrites which would determine signal & power integrity over the length. IE don't use a very long & skinny cable for delivering lots of power or high speed data unless the cable was bought for that specific purpose, which is something consumers do today if they aren't using professional installers.
- Dylan16807 9y ago
  Most of the rant is about different device capabilities, and how cables being more or less the same makes it almost worse instead of better. And that high variance in cable quality is a bigger deal than it needs to be. You can't tell by looking at a cable what bandwidth and amperage it's supposed to support. Even if it has thick wires you can't tell if it has a chip to enable 5A charging. Also there's a non-quality factor. USB-C cables with no high speed wire pairs are valid and are quite common. You don't need more than USB 2.0 in a charging cable.
  - aidenn0 9y ago
    It would be nice if we had some standardized iconography for the cables (xAmps, thunderbolt/non-thunderbolt, &c.). There are really only a few useful permutations of cables. Devices are a bit more complicated, but I'm hoping that the Hub situation will sort itself out (early in the days of USB 1.1, I remember plenty of devices that wouldn't work with hubs, or only with certain hubs).
    - matt_kantor 9y ago
      There is standardized iconography[0][1]. It's enforced under trademark law by the USB Implementers Forum. In addition to the old "basic" (USB 1.0/1.1), "hi-speed" (USB 2.0), and "on the go" icons there's now "superspeed" (USB 3.0), "superspeed+" (USB 3.1), and icons for the power delivery spec. The new icons are just as inscrutable as the old ones, but they exist and the USB Implementers Forum requires correct labeling for all cables and devices. The various proprietary extensions might be less consistent with labeling, but at least every Thunderbolt-compatible cable I've seen has a little lightning bolt icon in addition to the standard USB ones. [0]: http://www.usb.org/developers/logo_license/Trademark_License_Agreement_Licensed_Mark_Requirements_062017.pdf http://www.usb.org/developers/logo_license/Trademark_License... [1]: http://www.usb.org/developers/logo_license/USB-IF_Logo_Usage_Guidelines_FINAL_071317.pdf http://www.usb.org/developers/logo_license/USB-IF_Logo_Usage...
ChuckMcM 9y ago
A committee goes into a room to design a single vehicle that will do all jobs, it will carry heavy loads, it will commute to work, it will fly between airports, it will work on the watar and below the water. Such is the challenge facing these guys. Is it surprising that it doesn't work well? Not really. The compromises are pretty extensive. And between the users demanding thin phones and rugged connectors, its really really hard to do that with anything other than perhaps titanium. I have a bunch of computers, my oldest was built in 1968 the latest was built last year. Invariably the port complexity goes up with the older computers, and connector reliability also goes up. I've got AUI cables for Ethernet that work as well today as they did in 1984 when they were all the rage. I've got 50 pin SCSI-1 and 36 pin Centronics printer cables that are reliable and functional. I've got computers with 3 of the four USB 2.0 connections on them unusable either due to fusing issues or mechanical strain. I've got a phone handset (my developer's version of a Nexus 1) with a micro USB connection that won't hold the connector in the plug. I guess the bottom line is that we can make really reliable and ugly connectors.
- digi_owl 9y ago
  There are committees and there are committees. In this instance i feel it was a committee stuffed with company yes men rather than electrical and computer engineers. And thus we get a "standard" that is very adaptable to company "needs" but a nightmare in terms of electrical and computing (never mind basic daily usage).
- jamhan 9y ago
  Seen "The Pentagon Papers"? [1] [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aXQ2lO3ieBA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aXQ2lO3ieBA
  - sukruh 9y ago
    You meant "Pentagon Wars".
- sacheendra 9y ago
  A major change I see between the cables and connectors you describe is the move from parallel communication to serial communication. This has brought with it a great improvement in speed. I suppose, we could have a large connector with just a few pins for serial communication, but then these individual pins would be vulnerable to breakage just as they were in the old parallel connectors. Maybe even more breakable due to their sparsity. Im surprised your connectors lasted so long. Contact based connectors rather than pin based based connectors as mentioned in some other thread might be the answer. I don't know what problems they might lead to though. Personally, I'm a huge fan of apple MagSafe 1/2 cables.
flyGuyOnTheSly 9y ago
>Much of USB-C’s awesome capability comes from Thunderbolt and other Alternate Modes. But due to their potential bandwidth demands, computers can’t have very many USB-C ports. Why is this the case? I read that thunderbolt v3 can handle upwards of 40Gbit/s. Ok... but what is limiting the number of USB-C Thunderbolt-enabled ports that a given computer can have? Surely each of those ports are not being maxed out to 100% of their bandwidth 24/7? Why can't the bandwidth just be limited as needed like in a cheap router for example? (I know nothing about hardware, FYI)
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- Viper007Bond 9y ago
  PCIe lanes usually. CPUs only give you so many.
flying_sheep 9y ago
To solve the problems what the author is facing, we need to invent another port and cable standard -- which is far worse than keeping USB-C-like port and only buying a new cable.
perilunar 9y ago
This may be a stupid question, but why does a serial bus require 24 pins? That’s only one less than the old DB-25 parallel cables. (I know it’s really only 12 mirrored, but still). USB 1-2 got away with 4 pins. Also, why can’t we just switch to optical cables already? We’d only need +V, GND and the fibre. Just use the 3.5 mm audio plug (round, fits any way up) with a hollow point, like Mini-TOSLINK did.
- ianhowson 9y ago
  > why does a serial bus require 24 pins It turns out to be cheaper and easier to aggregate multiple serial links than to run a wide parallel bus. Practically every modern high-speed interconnect uses multiple aggregated serial links -- USB, Ethernet, SATA, PCIe, DDR3+, DVI+HDMI+DP+LVDS, etc, etc. > why can’t we just switch to optical cables already Too expensive. A big part of USB's dominance in the mid-90's was that it was way cheaper than the alternatives of the time. Thunderbolt was originally designed for optical interconnects. > Just use the 3.5 mm audio plug It's physically too large for current and upcoming designs. I miss TOSLINK.
- Kliment 9y ago
  It's not exactly mirrored even. The way the 24 break down is this: You need 2 power and 2 ground pins per side to carry the large currents needed. Those all get wired to the same (thick) cable (though usually split in two to make the cable more flexible). That's 8/24 pins, 2 wires total. You have two pins (per side) to signal which mode the cable is being used for and which way around it's plugged in. Because there are so many alternate modes with each having its own signaling standard, you can't pack those in-band, particularly for the case of analog audio, which doesn't have a digital data frame at all. Two are connected across from one connector to the other, so there's only three new wires for the 4 pins. So that's 12/24 pins, 5 wires total. You have two pins per side for USB 2.0. Those get wired to one side only, but are connected together in the device (not the cable). The opposite side pins are unconnected. So two connected and two unconnected new pins per side, and two new wires. 16/24 pins, 7 wires total. Some cables have active transceivers in them, and to ensure that the far-side transceiver is powered, there's an extra wire carrying its supply. This brings us to 8 wires. The remaining 8 pins are mapped to four high-speed differential pairs. The important thing about these is that they ONLY support high-speed low-voltage differential data and are protocol-agnostic. To get the enormous bandwidth the standard needs they have to split them up into four different serial lanes. So it's not a single serial bus. It's 5 serial buses, a handful of power and configuration pins. This brings us up to the full 24 pins (22 of which are in use) and 16 wires (or 18 if you opt for the thinner, doubled-up power and ground wires). It's very much not a serial bus. As for optical cables, that would work, but then you need to transfer all the control signals in-band and either stick to a single signaling standard (and have to do high-speed conversion for everything else) or somehow enclose various protocols in a single frame (like ethernet). This would require a fundamental redesign of peripherals, rather than a small change (a mux and control IC and new port). Additionally, optical transceivers are very expensive and power-hungry at high speeds, to the point where even for extremely high link speeds copper is still being used for ethernet. TOSLINK succeeded because at the very low data rates it has, the optical link hardware is cheap and doesn't use much power.
pier25 9y ago
USB-C is the JavaScript of cables and ports.
irascible 9y ago
It just works.
yoavm 9y ago
I just love the fact I can now charge my laptop and my phone using the same charger - and both charge super fast. I travel often and going with one charger is a life saver. Being able to charge my laptop from my old power bank to get two more hours is also super cool. I remember discovering that some of my Micro-USB cables could only charge and couldn't transmit any data. I honestly don't understand why people talk about the issues with USB-C as if it was a new thing. Seems to me like most of the problems are theoretic and that most end-users are actually happy with the new standard.
- marcosscriven 9y ago
  I know it's extremely unlikely, I do wish Apple would move its phones and tablets to use USB-C too.
  - iwintermute 9y ago
    I can't understand why they won't do it.
    - narrowtux 9y ago
      I think 2 reasons: 1. They already have a lot of accessories for lightning and they would kinda lose that sweet 30 % MFi for 3rd party lightning accessories 2. A lot of people who don't know why USB C is great will probably bitch about how Apple is changing the port on the iPhone _again_, like they did when they switched from 30 pin to lightning. Could be a PR nightmare
      - iwintermute 9y ago
        No PR nightmare is bigger than loss of headphone jack - I imagine lot of people had great and expensive headphones that are no longer usable directly. Apple seems to survived that.
  - cnkeller 9y ago
    If memory serves, Apple had a licensing deal with Intel over the lightning port on the iPhones. I can't recall the expiration of the deal, but that's why the laptops already have USB-C and the phones/tablets don't.
erikb 9y ago
Not impossible, just unfinished. I didn't read all the points because it feels like a pointed list, and not really a running text. But it seems to me like I haven't seen a single problem that can't be overcome with fine tuning the USB-C system. E.g. some ports have thunderbolt, some don't. Well it looks like in the future all of them are expected to have thunderbolt or a similar standard. All I'm taking from it is "It's not fully usable yet" and I continue to use normal USB for longer.
Ellipsis753 9y ago
I like USB-C and I buy into the dream a lot. Additionally, the fact that I can plug it in either way around to charge my phone is amazing! The USB-C cable is obviously very capable, it's just a bit of a mess with interoperability. However, given that USB-C requires licencing, I feel like they can probably fix a lot of these issues afterwards by changing what they do and don't allow. (In a way kind of similar to software patches for the licence itself.) For example, I assume they could start charging more to use older USB A/B, drop some supported USB-C features that are kind of messy and start charging more for devices that lazily only sort of implement bits of the specification. The old USB shape has been around for 20 years and counting, if the new USB-C shape is around similarly as long, we have plenty of time to get these issues worked out. (This is already going so much better than ipv6 adoption!)
Friedduck 9y ago
After a month or so of owning a brand-new 15” MBP my regret is that I didn’t buy one of the holdover 2015s. The charger is absurdly large and I have a growing collection of dongles that need to accompany me depending on the task. I’m currently using a Rube Goldberg two-dongle solution to get photos off of an SD card. Moreover I still can’t find what I need for my home office in USB-C. I won’t even get into how much less functional the touchbar is than the hard keys they replace. Terrible user experience.
ksec 9y ago
I think it is clear, the future is mostly wireless. Why would we need a Wired Connection? The only reason we need wired is either Power or High Speed Connection. Power: It is highly unlikely in the next 5 years time we wont have a true wireless power transfer,( i.e not sitting on a Power Mat ), enough energy to power a Laptop, Monitor or Desktop. High Speed: That is anything from Monitor Cable, Massive SSD external storage, External GPU, and.... I cant think of anything else. ( Suggestions Welcome. ) Basically, what Thunderbolt was designed for; External PCI-E and DisplayPort. Sometimes this year or next we are going to finalize what I hope will be the Wireless Standards for decades to come, 802.11ax and 802.11ay. 802.11 ax is the successor of 802.11ac, basically what the industry learned from LTE and LTE-A, and moves the best of those tech across to WiFI, works in both 2.4hGhz and 5Ghz. We could expect real world, uncontended speed of 1Gbps in 2x2, and 2Gbps in 4x4, and both are very conservative numbers. 802.11 ay is successor of the failed 60Ghz 802.11ad. Real world speed 10Gbps+. Bluetooth 5 which and Improves version of 4.1. And Bluetooth 4.1 is the arguable first Bluetooth which really makes it acceptable in general usage, and if 5 improves the better. Assuming no Patents non-sense, we could expect to have WiFi chips in what we are connecting now via cables. You will only need cable for Power and High Speed Connection. And coincidentally Thunderbolt is going to be an Open Standard Next year. What we need to fix / improve is power delivery on USB 3.1 branding. May be Future revision of USB will do that. For now, sitting in a transition period between Wired and Wireless will always be a little painful in the short term.

635 points by okket 9y ago

But due to their potential bandwidth demands, computers can’t have very many USB-C ports Isn't this more a function of Intel product differentiation and closing off their bus to others? I get the feeling the killer server ARM is going to be a bandwidth monster.

revelation 9y ago
Mostly it's the authors ignorance of the standard. Just because you can connect a display to an USB-C port doesn't mean that is taking up USB bandwidth or requires the CPU to do more work than previously. It's just more ports integrated into one.
- KirinDave 9y ago
  I'm not sure why you're being downvoted. It's pretty clear Marco doesn't understand this nuance.
  - vetinari 9y ago
    If you want TB3 support on each USB port, you will run out of PCIe lanes available on the CPU. Just with basic support for 2 PCIe lanes per port and 4 ports, you are at 8 already. Similarly with running DisplayPort to each port, your GPU doesn't have unlimited number of encoders.
- andreasley 9y ago
  If there's a port, there has to be sufficient bandwidth available, regardless if anything is connected and what that might be. USB 3.1 Gen 2 supports 10Gbps, so 4 ports means 40Gbps. If it's a MacBook Pro, it has to support Thunderbolt 3 on all ports. That's 160Gbps for 4 ports, or 16 PCIe lanes. That happens to be exactly the number of PCIe lanes the Intel i7-7920HQ CPU has.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
- redial 9y ago
  It seems to me you are the one who is confused. There are two cases, (1) where the port is directly connected to the cpu and (2) where the port is connected to a 'hub' that is connected to the cpu. He's clearly talking about 1, which is by far the most common scenario, certainly on Macs, and in that case it does require bandwidth and CPU cycles to run at full speed. If you also want that usb-c port to support thunderbolt and all its features you need even more pcie lanes and even access to the gpu.

cbhl 9y ago

USB-A had all of these compatibility concerns too, when it first came out. I remember having a Gateway All-in-One with only two USB-A ports in '98. You had to worry about USB 1 versus USB 2, and some devices wouldn't get enough power through a hub, and so forth. I'm really looking forward to seeing where USB-C is in two or three years.

jseliger 9y ago
I was going to write something similar. This looks like most port transitions. Right now everything is a mess. In five years it probably won't be.
- wmf 9y ago
  He does address this at the end. Also, a cable that doesn't support Thunderbolt and 100W charging will probably always be cheaper than one that does, and thus we should expect suboptimal cables to keep being sold.
  - damnyou 9y ago
    It will also be lighter and thinner. Try replacing "suboptimal" with "Pareto optimal" in your everyday life. It made a positive difference for me.
nebulous1 9y ago
I think his point is that it was a missed opportunity to learn from those exact mistakes
- dom0 9y ago
  Things like passive hubs working poorly were not in the spec. This stuff is.
colejohnson66 9y ago
I’m too young to have experienced the transition, but were there cables that could fry your computer? https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2016/02/google-engineer-finds-usb-type-c-cable-thats-so-bad-it-fried-his-chromebook-pixel/ https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2016/02/google-engineer-find...

maltalex 9y ago

TL;DR - USB-C is a connector and not all ports/cables/hubs support all of its features and modes. So not everything that can be connected using a USB-C will work the same way, or even at all. - Due to their potential bandwidth demands, computers can’t have very many USB-C ports - USB-C will be phased out and replaced before settling down

ghaff 9y ago
One of the folks involved in the original USB standards work once told me that the lack of reversibility (or at least a more obvious indicator of orientation) was the main thing they got wrong with the initial standard.
- HocusPocusLocus 9y ago
  There are huge indicators. People just jam it till it works. IE. No user testing.
  - on_and_off 9y ago
    Unfortunately some devices don't respect the indicator :( Most people don't know about it anyway, making the c port reversible was a good decision.
    - digi_owl 9y ago
      The port itself is nice, is in the cube of data rate, power rate, port type that is the problem. You can have A ports that deliver 20V and 3.1 data rates, and C ports that deliver only 5V and 2.0 data rates, and they are both valid according to spec.
  - ino 9y ago
    I have a cable that has the indicator on the wrong side.
    - erik_seaberg 9y ago

tw04 9y ago

So... USB-C is bad because cable vendors haven't come up with a good way to easily identify what features a given cable supports? Which could be done extremely easily by things like color coding... exactly what we had to do with USB Type-A ports. I'll never understand articles like this - let's not standardize on a form factor because not every single application of that form factor has the same requirements???

brazzledazzle 9y ago
I think (a big part of) the point is that it's frustrating. And it really is.
- tw04 9y ago
  Not really. The cable thing is easily solved - don't buy cheap cables. If you ever plan on using USB-C for thunderbolt, only buy cables capable of thunderbolt. As for devices - I guess I'd say know what you're buying? How is it any different than the fact I have to know that some mini-displayport ports can do thunderbolt and some can't? Some cables can and some can't? I mean... Belkin has already started putting the thunderbolt icon on the cables they sell that support it. This isn't anywhere near as complicated as he's claiming. The only gray area is people buying the cheapest possible cable they can find on Amazon then acting shocked when they get what they paid for.
  - wmf 9y ago
    The only gray area is people buying the cheapest possible cable they can find... That's 90% of people though.
  - on_and_off 9y ago
    Not that easily solved. Costly cables are usually better but you don't have any warranty. You can use bensong leung tests to find a good one but need to hope that they have not silently changed the cables since his test. When you buy a new device, you have no idea of the capabilities of the cable that comes with it. So you need to remember whether it uses PC or QC or just always use it's provided cable. All in all we are still far from "let's take any usb-c cable and connect it to an usb-c device". It is too bad, it is a very nice dream.

eugenv 9y ago

At least it's reversible, so that's a step forward.

HocusPocusLocus 9y ago

Sounds like he's complaining about a labeling issue on cables and ports. The different USB-C capabilities is a feature, but the lack of labels is a huge bug. Who wants to fix? Make a Web 2.0 website with photo-realistic 3D renders of your solution, then take it on the road.

toyg 9y ago
Two words: washing labels. Just have a rough industry agreement of which features should be represented and what their symbols should be, then put them on connectors (which are pretty long, there is plenty of usable space) and on packaging and listings.
- mchahn 9y ago
  > Two words: washing labels. Great Idea. However, I had to write software one time that had all the possible washing symbols as input. There were 30 or 40 possible symbols. No human could possibly know all of them.
  - toyg 9y ago
    Yeah I know, I even downloaded an iOS app to read them ("Laundry Day"); but in practice I noticed most people just learn the one or two they care about and ignore the rest - because if you don't own a tumble dryer, you don't really care about the symbol for that. So if you care about Thunderbolt 2, you would look only for that icon, ignoring the rest; power might have a scaled one like washing temperature, and so on. As usual though, the problem is that the industry has to come together to agree these symbols, be it formally through the USB consortium or informally in some other venue.

tammer 9y ago

I think these are actually the most minor problems with the USB-C vision. The VAST majority of consumers will never encounter a thunderbolt device, and the ones that do can be expected to understand the cable difference. What is far more of an issue for the standard is the established network effect. USB-A has become so commonplace that its built into our furniture, and micro-USB is a legally defined requirement for device charging in some areas. These foundational forces will prove to be a massive deterrent to USB-C uptake, and far more of a risk to the vision than multiple cable types that are clearly labeled! But, the bright side of this I think is Apple's adoption of the Qi charging standard. Its clear that an evolutional jump to wireless charging will entail new technology, so I see Qi taking up the "one way to charge everything" vision.

hvjackson 9y ago
I agree, the USB-A form factor is by far the most widely used peripheral connector in the history of computers. The shift from USB-A to USB-C is without precedent. Practically every mouse, keyboard, printer, camera, charger, and external drive made in the last 20 years has used USB-A. Practically every car in the last 10 years has USB-A. Every hotel room, every airplane, every DC power converter. There are still millions (billions?) of devices shipped every year with USB-A. We are nowhere near the inflection point.
- freehunter 9y ago
  Luckily space exists for devices using USB-A and devices using USB-C, and making cables with A at one end and C at the other is trivial enough that many cables exist like this. Two compatible cable standard is easy to handle. The hard part comes when you have USB-A, USB-C, Lightning, Micro-USB, and Mini-USB all competing. Trying to keep enough of each type of cable on hand gets to be pricy.
  - digi_owl 9y ago
    Cables that are hell bent on breaking something, because of the damned resistors everyone gets wrong.

tschellenbach 9y ago

With all the hubs I still can't get my 2017 Macbook Pro 15inch to reliably run an external monitor. (it lags every now and then). So far I didn't find out yet which of the components is actually causing it. Crazy how complex it is.

ScottBurson 9y ago
I don't see how lag could be caused by a cable or hub. It's not like a remote desktop or VNC connection, where what flows over the cable is commands to change a stored image; there is no stored image -- every pixel is re-sent for every frame. Any lag must therefore be internal to the laptop. If you have an image on the monitor, and it isn't scrambled and the colors are right, the cable and hub are working.
- ricardobeat 9y ago
  You’d be surprised. I was just last week forced to use a USB-C-to-DisplayPort cable, instead of a straightforward DP to DP cable to get a 4K monitor to work. Using the latter, the computer thought everything was fine but the screen flickered like a CRT, horizontal splits and all, and went black every 3s. There are so many layers involved I don’t even want to think about it, and am just happy it worked...
- dom0 9y ago
  On a marginal connection source/sink of a DP link will re-train which interrupts main link operation, causing brief lags in display. If the connection is even worse you'll get the usual black-picture-for-a-few-seconds dance.
cjcampbell 9y ago
I haven't run into any issues yet, but I may have just been lucky on my hub/cable selections. What type of video connection?
- tschellenbach 9y ago
  Tried display port and hdmi so far. These hubs (https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B074TD1CRZ/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o03_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1 https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B074TD1CRZ/ref=oh_aui_deta... https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B06VVNN8XV/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o05_s01?ie=UTF8&psc=1 https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B06VVNN8XV/ref=oh_aui_deta...) both on this screen https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00YD3DBOC/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o01_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1 https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00YD3DBOC/ref=oh_aui_deta... It's probably something unrelated to the hubs. Who knows though :) Many moving pieces.

chx 9y ago

I wrote up the fun that is USB C at https://superuser.com/a/1200112/41259 https://superuser.com/a/1200112/41259 . How big a mess USB C is? Check this note from Plugable: "We have had several confirmed cases where lowering the Power Output of the internal Wi-Fi adapter to 75% in Dell XPS models has helped with USB-C disconnect behavior." Also, while you can get a small USB C to dual DisplayPort MST hub http://a.co/hyXGdBA http://a.co/hyXGdBA and also you can get a small USB C to DisplayPort adapter with USB C power passthrough http://a.co/1KE2imb http://a.co/1KE2imb you can't get an USB C MST hub with power passthrough in a single, small, relatively cheap device. You need an expensive, quite huge device like the ThinkPad USB C dock to get this functionality. It seems as if every USB C accessory maker took a blood oath on hardwiring a HDMI converter to the second port of their MST hub. (Yes, taking a USB C to DP converter and an ordinary MST hub is a cheap solution, of course, but it's not elegant at all especially because both insist on using cords, creating a mess.) Also, there have been laptop chargers with 65W or 90W on the laptop side and one or perhaps even two USB charging ports, if you are real lucky then 2.4A each. Now that both your laptop and phone charges via USB C you'd think you could get an AC adapter with two USB C ports and perhaps a few USB A thrown in for good measure. Dream on. The highest wattage adapter I found with two USB C ports is 55W, it doesn't even charge a single laptop, it's all 5V. There's a well known ;) brand called LVSun which sells a 80W charger which can do a non USB C laptop + USB C phone (or a USB C laptop + a non USB C phone) plus it has a few USB A ports as well. Still, it's not two USB C ports.

randyrand 9y ago

"There’s usually no way to tell whether a given USB-C device requires Thunderbolt, either — you just need to plug it in and see if it works." Or how about something called google? Who are these people plugging random devices into their computers that they know nothing about?

0x6877 9y ago
Most tech users... not every user is as tech savvy as your average HN reader and able to google these things, and that’s the issue.
- julian_1 9y ago
  The more technically competent you are - the more you want to be focused on your domain specialization - syadmin, cloud, development, devops, networking, PM etc. Why would any professional wish to waste time learning the complex compatibility matrix of USB-C consumer cabling?
  - 0x6877 9y ago
    Exactly. Why should anyone? You should just be able to look at the cable and know what it does. Which as the article points out is not the current situation. The person I replied to stated that googling it is the answer but not everyone is that competent.
jotm 9y ago
Don't even bother... if you're not designing for morons, you're not selling anything these days, apparently.
- throw5427 9y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Design_of_Everyday_Things https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Design_of_Everyday_Things https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don%27t_Make_Me_Think https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don%27t_Make_Me_Think
- 9y ago

bluedino 9y ago

The state of adapters is atrocious. Apple couldn’t even release a good one to go with their flagship products. Take the USB-C to HDMI adapter. The USB port is useless for connecting to external drives. When I plug it into my MacBook one of three things happens: 1 - nothing 2 - it works at USB 2.0 speeds 3 - it erratically works for a minute or two then locks up my laptop Meanwhile, the plain USB-C to USB adapter works perfectly.

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]

cjcampbell 9y ago

Since I got over the hurdle of buying cables and adapters, I've been mostly happy with USB-C. The one lingering concern is actually mechanical. Many of the cables/dongles are long and skinny relative to the tiny metal connector, placing a fair amount of torque on the port. A number of the cables I've used are poorly fitting as well, exacerbating the mechanical strain. A good example of this problem is the Yubi-4C. The connector protrudes about half a mm from the port and it has enough play to wiggle up/down/left/right. Having had to replace the logic board and I/O boards on my 2016 MBP 15 within 3 months due to port damage, I get a bit nervous when I notice fit problems like this. Aside from outright damaging the ports, poorly built cables seem to wreak havoc on the mechanism that grips cables on Apple machines. Prior to the board replacement, the Apple power cables would gradually come loose by their own weight. Fortunately, the Geniuses did agree that this was a problem and replaced the top case along with the guts of my computer.

ohazi 9y ago
We'll probably have to wait a while to see how it fares longer term, but so far I actually prefer the USB-C physical connector to Micro USB. I'm not entirely sure whether I prefer it over USB-A, but I also prefer it over an HDMI or full-size DisplayPort connector.
mchahn 9y ago
I've broken several motherboards and many cables over the years. It drives me crazy. The USB-C is the worst. I'm on my third cable now. At least I finally figured out to make sure I get USB-C chargers with removable cables. Now I only have to replace the cable, which I've done twice in the last month. The Dell XPS 13, which I'm getting in a week or so, has both a proprietary power jack and supports USB-C charging. I'm very happy that I won't be breaking many more USB-C cables.
- KitDuncan 9y ago
  Dells proprietary charger is the worst. They have a cable dedicated to insuring the use of original chargers, which appears to be especially prone to breakage. If it does, your XPS won't charge anymore, but it still gets power. I managed to repair my charger, but it was a real clusterfuck.

cletus 9y ago

I'll go further than this. USB-C isn't misguided, problematic or questionable. It's insanity. Take a given cable and there's a number of dimensions you need to considered: - Supported power standards (none, USB, various other wattages and standards) - Supported bandwidth. I think some don't even support data transfer (which might include the USB-C cable that comes with the Apple Macbook charger) - Supported modes (USB, Thunderbolt, DisplayPort?) There's no colour scheme that can adequately handle all the possible variations. But there are other problems: it makes no sense to have all 4 ports on a 15" Macbook Pro (for example) support power. You only need one port to charge with. I think I read that not all the ports on the 13" Macbook Pro are the same (in terms of capabilities). This is just strikes me as a (hollow) victory for principle ("one port/cable to rule them all") over pragmatism. This always reminds me of the quote: a foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of small minds. This whole thing is expensive, unnecessary, user-unfriendly and confusing (to the average user).

petercooper 9y ago
You only need one port to charge with. Different strokes. Being able to charge on either side is one of the biggest usability wins of the new MBP to me.
- cletus 9y ago
  And this is the same Macbook Pro that for reasons that I can't fathom moved the headphone jack to the right side despite every (single) headphone cable going to the left can. Go figure.
  - mdonahoe 9y ago
    Enjoy that headphone jack while it lasts!
  - wallacoloo 9y ago
    > every (single) headphone cable going to the left can. FWIW a number of studio headphones support plugging in a cable to either can rather than restricting you to just the left one, if you want to go that route. V-moda sells a few pairs like this and denotes the feature as "dual inputs".

amluto 9y ago

> And, of course, there’s usually no way to tell at a glance whether a given cable, charger, battery, or device supports USB-C PD or at what wattages. Forget wattage -- voltage is also a big deal. Want to charge a Dell laptop? You need 20V. Charger support for PD at 20V is somewhat related to wattage, but it's easy to find 40-odd watt chargers that can't supply 20V. And there is usually nothing in the specs that tells you this.

colejohnson66 9y ago
Is there any reason the spec couldn’t say all cables deliver 5V and the recieving end converts that to what it needs? Because from my understanding on electronics, if you double the voltage, you half the amperage. So supply 5V@20A and let the recieving end convert that to 20V@5A
- SomeHacker44 9y ago
  Less current usually means less heat generated in the wires and so you can use smaller copper wires. Higher voltage requires better insulation on the wires. Altogether I think it's a good idea to use 20V at 5A for 100W rather than 20A at 5V. You will get much more heat and voltage loss at 20A for the same size wire.
- aidenn0 9y ago
  Cables are limited by both current and voltage. The thickness of the copper limits the current, and the thickness of the insulation limits the voltage. 20A is a massive amount of current and won't be easily carried by anything flexible (the wires in the wall of your house are only rated for 15A, and they are quite bulky). 20V on the other hand isn't that high and needs very little insulation.

mtgx 9y ago

The USB guys should have never allowed so many standards live within "one" standard. It may be better for the OEMs, especially as they both save money on ports and get to mislead customers into thinking they may get that fast version of USB-C, when they really won't. But so many standards acting as one is very confusing to consumers.

pasbesoin 9y ago

If they were going to engage in this, they should have made clear and authoritative capabilities markings on the equipment a required part of the standard. And, as others mentioned, I also worry about torque and stress on the port, particularly in mobile scenarios.

Decade 9y ago

The core problem is the large number of options. When USB-C was announced and I saw the pin-outs, my immediate thought was, “This is going to be a support nightmare.” I should have written that down, so I could point at it as proof of my genius. :P But I didn’t know what a garbage fire USB-PD is. I was thinking of Alternate Mode. Alternate Mode is what enables Thunderbolt 3 on USB-C. We already had an alternate mode for USB: MHL. Which divides HDMI ports between plain HDMI ports and HDMI ports that support MHL. The Alternate Mode multiplies the number of ways displays can connect to video sources via USB. Not to mention what everybody else has commented on. All these incompatible options are using the same connector. That’s obviously confusing to users and frustrating to support personnel.

SomeStupidPoint 9y ago
I just don't understand how anyone thought going from "if it fits, it works" to having to know compatability sets was going to end well. It's against recommend practice on such topics, for what I think are obvious reasons.
digi_owl 9y ago
That, and allowing OEMs to decide port, data rates, and power delivery spec individually. In particular as we have a rudimentary power spec in the 3.1 "data" spec, involving resistors in the cables(?!), and a separate power delivery spec that goes above and beyond the 3.1 power stuff to define anything up to 20V at multiple As. Frankly to me there seems to have been a initial C port design that was a "simple" mechanical reversible implementation of the existing 3.0 wiring. And then someone decided that rather than simply have the pins being mechanically doubled (either in plug or in port) they could make each be an individual wire and run even more stuff through the port. And thus we get Alternate Mode that can carry just about anything the OEMs dream up...

woah 9y ago

You could write a blog post called “the impossible dream of Ethernet” and agonize about the fact that there are many different network protocols.

freehunter 9y ago
The problem set of computing technologies in 1983 is a bit different from that of 2017 though.
justinator 9y ago
Can we? In a,"consumer" role I've never plugged an ethernet cable into my computer only to find out I got the wrong type of thing for this particular doodad, then lament about things in the comments of a shopping cart site. It kinda just worked.
nayuki 9y ago
What parts of Ethernet/networking cause confusion and incompatibility? Please name them specifically.
- rocqua 9y ago
  - PoE - hubs vs switches (old issue) - cat5, cat5e cat6 cat7 - 100Mbps vs 1Gbps (there are still commercial 100Mbps products for sale) - The horror that used to be crossover cables before auto-detection.
  - greedo 9y ago
    Hubs and switches are not an issue, nor are the various ethernet terminations standards. Same with speed. Users by an Ethernet cable, 99% of the time it'll be suitable for gigE (and thus suitable for 100Mb/sec down to 10Mb/sec).
  - nayuki 9y ago
    Power over Ethernet: I haven't studied this one, so I'll assume it has some subtleties involved. Hubs vs. switches: Hubs are awful (have used one), burn them with prejudice. Collisions bring everything down to 1 Mb/s. And hubs are disallowed in gigabit anyway, due to no CSMA/CD. Category cables: USB has different cables too, and at least Ethernet didn't change the number of conductor wires. But the biggest difference is that Ethernet cables are often in walls or inaccessible places, whereas USB cables are user-replaceable. 100 Mb/s vs. 1 Gb/s: One problem I noticed is that a link might start at 1Gb/s, but after many weeks a momentary error (e.g. power blip) makes the link drop to 100Mb/s or even 10Mb/s and does not automatically recover to the higher speed without manually replugging. IIRC USB doesn't drop down to a lower speed in this manner. Crossover cables: IIRC if you are using purely switches (no hubs), you will never use crossover cables. Other than that, pervasive MDI/MDI-X has silently solved the problem. Though I wish the standard didn't create this problem in the first place. I do appreciate the fact that Ethernet treats nodes as peers. Whereas USB is based on a tree rooted at the master and the master must poll devices to ask them to transfer data. This tidy idea gets into trouble when, for example, a phone can be either a host (OTG) or a client. Also it is impossible to directly share USB devices between two hosts (e.g. a webcam accessible to two computers simultaneously).

sneak 9y ago

At least it fails open, to the common baseline. “can plug in, play audio, sync at usb2.0 speeds, and charge slowly”. Compare and contrast 30 pin dock/lightning.

Roritharr 9y ago

Two years ago i saw this coming and got pummeled for saying so: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9645013#9645650 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9645013#9645650 Ironically since then i've just made Thunderbolt 3 a requirement for all company laptops and the whole company, mac and windows gets to use the same dongles, chargers and even dockingstations, which I count as a win.

mleiphamellis 9y ago
If you don’t mind sharing, I am very eager to know which cross platform dock you settled on!
- Roritharr 9y ago
  CalDigit TS3

glasz 9y ago

the most brilliant thing about this: apple sacrificed magsafe for the clusterfuck that usb-c is.

ngcc_hk 9y ago

Whilst it raise good issues, thunderbolt are shown on computer and cable.

osteele 9y ago

Perhaps a similar simplification can be applied to NEMA connectors https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NEMA_connector https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NEMA_connector, to reduce the number of extension cords and add thrills to our daily lives.

exabrial 9y ago

A lot of the problems seems to be implementation... Apple's quality and value has done nothing but nose-dive, while they focus on "impossibly useful" things like the touch bar. How removing ports is a "feature" on a "professional" line or laptops still baffles me.

flatfilefan 9y ago

The nice thing about standards is that you have so many to choose from. Andrew S. Tanenbaum Computer Networks, 2nd ed., p. 254.

markcerqueira 9y ago

It's not perfect (it may even be terrible) but I can charge my computer, my phone, and my Nintendo Switch with it which is a huge improvement over the last generation of cable mayhem.

marichards 9y ago

This reminds me of abstract classes

myrandomcomment 9y ago

Just went from MacBook Pro to MacBook (fly 120k miles a year). Got Apple 4K (LG) monitor. Disc are USB2 from monitor as is Ethernet. Damn thing does not wake from sleep with USB keyboard. I had an LG 21:9 34” display with thunderbolt drives, network. The 4K monitor is a great picture but 21” is crap. Apple just put thunderbolt in the MacBook please. USB3 can die. Happy with physical interface, rest is crap.

tobias__ 9y ago

USB-C feels like the dynamically typed programming analog of the cable world

crispinb 9y ago

It's so confusing, to ensure compatibility a consumer might be tempted to just buy everything from one manufacturer. This would be very upsetting for Apple, I imagine. Proprietariness by stealth?

plaidfuji 9y ago

New MacBook Pro user here: the four USB-C (+ stereo mini audio jack) port configuration doesn't bother me as much as I thought it would. It's nice that I can plug the power cable in on either side of the laptop. One almost inevitably needs some kind of display dongle unless you have both HDMI and VGA on board (and VGA is an ugly port, let's be honest), although I'll say the lack of native HDMI is a pain point for me. But also, if I'm using the laptop without power, I now have 4 ports available, which is more than enough.

BoorishBears 9y ago
Another new MacBook Pro user here: The two ports the 13" model came with are not enough. And the official Apple USB C to HDMI/USB adapter charges slower through the passthrough than a direct connection, meaning if I'm low on battery I need to dedicate a USB port to charging. My monitor at home (XR382CQK) supports USB C and that's ok, it charges, does video, and acts as a hub via one cable. The problem is the world hasn't had time to embrace USB C. I'd gladly trade my old setup of needing two cables (one Magsafe + one Thunderbolt) for not needing a dongle literally everywhere else I use my laptop with an external display.

chrisBob 9y ago

I am the only one at work with the new MBP and I get frequent questions about it and the ports. I usually tell them that I firmly believe USB-C is the way of the future, but alas I live in the present.

lytedev 9y ago

I thought the entire point was to have _cables_ that work everywhere, which is my preference. I think the ports themselves can and should do different things - even my USB-A ports on my laptop have little icons beside them indicating their purpose or capabilities. The point is to not have to keep many dozen different cables on hand for everything.

lmm 9y ago
That part doesn't work either though. There are at least four different types of cable (3.1-speed, 3.2-speed, high wattage, and thunderbolt)
- colejohnson66 9y ago
  Regarding the 3.1-speed: Is there any rational explanation for “USB 3 5GB” being renamed to “USB 3.1 gen 1 5GB” and “USB 3.1 10GB” being renamed to “USB 3.1 gen 2 10GB”?
  - wmf 9y ago
    That was probably done to protect the companies selling "obsolete" 3.0 devices by giving them a "free upgrade" to 3.1.

clebio 9y ago

This is the sort of well-written, detailed reporting that I believe to be true, but which ought to have citations for each claim. Of course, cataloging and adding those sources would mean the article takes a lot longer to write and publish.

flatfilefan 9y ago
If you ask me he should actually set up a proper crowdsourced database of all those cables and cases. ... 3. Profit!

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

rocky1138 9y ago

Sorry, but what exactly is wrong with USB A and micro USB? I've never understood why USB type-C was a thing. You can get 3.1 speeds on the old connector.

aidenn0 9y ago
1) Obviously USB-C is smaller than full-size A jacks. 2) Micro-USB type A never really caught on; I'm not sure there ever was a super-speed version of it 3) Super-Speed micro type-B is also much larger than USB-C 4) USB-C can optionally carry PCIe and/or Display Port 5) USB-C is reversible along all axes; either end goes into the computer flipped in either direction, same on device.

mjcohen 9y ago

I have an Asus C302CA chromebook and got a USB-A hub for it (https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01M59IOAW/ref=oh_aui_search_detailpage?ie=UTF8&psc=1 https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01M59IOAW/ref=oh_aui_sear...). It only works for storage on one of the two USB-C ports. I was about to return it when I thought of trying the other port.

ebrandell 9y ago

Dongle life. I hate to think that USB-C will become obsolete so quickly, but hate it even more that I'm required to use it right now...

zecken 9y ago

Strongly disagree with the article, it seems the author is confused about the internal hardware. The actual pin connections within all USB Type-C cables are the same -- no matter if they are shipped with a product that uses Thunderbolt, Displayport, or any other standard. The only variance cable to cable (and this exists on existing micro cables as well) is on things like shielding, AWG, and ferrites which would determine signal & power integrity over the length. IE don't use a very long & skinny cable for delivering lots of power or high speed data unless the cable was bought for that specific purpose, which is something consumers do today if they aren't using professional installers.

Dylan16807 9y ago
Most of the rant is about different device capabilities, and how cables being more or less the same makes it almost worse instead of better. And that high variance in cable quality is a bigger deal than it needs to be. You can't tell by looking at a cable what bandwidth and amperage it's supposed to support. Even if it has thick wires you can't tell if it has a chip to enable 5A charging. Also there's a non-quality factor. USB-C cables with no high speed wire pairs are valid and are quite common. You don't need more than USB 2.0 in a charging cable.
- aidenn0 9y ago
  It would be nice if we had some standardized iconography for the cables (xAmps, thunderbolt/non-thunderbolt, &c.). There are really only a few useful permutations of cables. Devices are a bit more complicated, but I'm hoping that the Hub situation will sort itself out (early in the days of USB 1.1, I remember plenty of devices that wouldn't work with hubs, or only with certain hubs).
  - matt_kantor 9y ago
    There is standardized iconography[0][1]. It's enforced under trademark law by the USB Implementers Forum. In addition to the old "basic" (USB 1.0/1.1), "hi-speed" (USB 2.0), and "on the go" icons there's now "superspeed" (USB 3.0), "superspeed+" (USB 3.1), and icons for the power delivery spec. The new icons are just as inscrutable as the old ones, but they exist and the USB Implementers Forum requires correct labeling for all cables and devices. The various proprietary extensions might be less consistent with labeling, but at least every Thunderbolt-compatible cable I've seen has a little lightning bolt icon in addition to the standard USB ones. [0]: http://www.usb.org/developers/logo_license/Trademark_License_Agreement_Licensed_Mark_Requirements_062017.pdf http://www.usb.org/developers/logo_license/Trademark_License... [1]: http://www.usb.org/developers/logo_license/USB-IF_Logo_Usage_Guidelines_FINAL_071317.pdf http://www.usb.org/developers/logo_license/USB-IF_Logo_Usage...

ChuckMcM 9y ago

A committee goes into a room to design a single vehicle that will do all jobs, it will carry heavy loads, it will commute to work, it will fly between airports, it will work on the watar and below the water. Such is the challenge facing these guys. Is it surprising that it doesn't work well? Not really. The compromises are pretty extensive. And between the users demanding thin phones and rugged connectors, its really really hard to do that with anything other than perhaps titanium. I have a bunch of computers, my oldest was built in 1968 the latest was built last year. Invariably the port complexity goes up with the older computers, and connector reliability also goes up. I've got AUI cables for Ethernet that work as well today as they did in 1984 when they were all the rage. I've got 50 pin SCSI-1 and 36 pin Centronics printer cables that are reliable and functional. I've got computers with 3 of the four USB 2.0 connections on them unusable either due to fusing issues or mechanical strain. I've got a phone handset (my developer's version of a Nexus 1) with a micro USB connection that won't hold the connector in the plug. I guess the bottom line is that we can make really reliable and ugly connectors.

digi_owl 9y ago
There are committees and there are committees. In this instance i feel it was a committee stuffed with company yes men rather than electrical and computer engineers. And thus we get a "standard" that is very adaptable to company "needs" but a nightmare in terms of electrical and computing (never mind basic daily usage).
jamhan 9y ago
Seen "The Pentagon Papers"? [1] [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aXQ2lO3ieBA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aXQ2lO3ieBA
- sukruh 9y ago
  You meant "Pentagon Wars".
sacheendra 9y ago
A major change I see between the cables and connectors you describe is the move from parallel communication to serial communication. This has brought with it a great improvement in speed. I suppose, we could have a large connector with just a few pins for serial communication, but then these individual pins would be vulnerable to breakage just as they were in the old parallel connectors. Maybe even more breakable due to their sparsity. Im surprised your connectors lasted so long. Contact based connectors rather than pin based based connectors as mentioned in some other thread might be the answer. I don't know what problems they might lead to though. Personally, I'm a huge fan of apple MagSafe 1/2 cables.

flyGuyOnTheSly 9y ago

>Much of USB-C’s awesome capability comes from Thunderbolt and other Alternate Modes. But due to their potential bandwidth demands, computers can’t have very many USB-C ports. Why is this the case? I read that thunderbolt v3 can handle upwards of 40Gbit/s. Ok... but what is limiting the number of USB-C Thunderbolt-enabled ports that a given computer can have? Surely each of those ports are not being maxed out to 100% of their bandwidth 24/7? Why can't the bandwidth just be limited as needed like in a cheap router for example? (I know nothing about hardware, FYI)

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
Viper007Bond 9y ago
PCIe lanes usually. CPUs only give you so many.

flying_sheep 9y ago

To solve the problems what the author is facing, we need to invent another port and cable standard -- which is far worse than keeping USB-C-like port and only buying a new cable.

perilunar 9y ago

This may be a stupid question, but why does a serial bus require 24 pins? That’s only one less than the old DB-25 parallel cables. (I know it’s really only 12 mirrored, but still). USB 1-2 got away with 4 pins. Also, why can’t we just switch to optical cables already? We’d only need +V, GND and the fibre. Just use the 3.5 mm audio plug (round, fits any way up) with a hollow point, like Mini-TOSLINK did.

ianhowson 9y ago
> why does a serial bus require 24 pins It turns out to be cheaper and easier to aggregate multiple serial links than to run a wide parallel bus. Practically every modern high-speed interconnect uses multiple aggregated serial links -- USB, Ethernet, SATA, PCIe, DDR3+, DVI+HDMI+DP+LVDS, etc, etc. > why can’t we just switch to optical cables already Too expensive. A big part of USB's dominance in the mid-90's was that it was way cheaper than the alternatives of the time. Thunderbolt was originally designed for optical interconnects. > Just use the 3.5 mm audio plug It's physically too large for current and upcoming designs. I miss TOSLINK.
Kliment 9y ago
It's not exactly mirrored even. The way the 24 break down is this: You need 2 power and 2 ground pins per side to carry the large currents needed. Those all get wired to the same (thick) cable (though usually split in two to make the cable more flexible). That's 8/24 pins, 2 wires total. You have two pins (per side) to signal which mode the cable is being used for and which way around it's plugged in. Because there are so many alternate modes with each having its own signaling standard, you can't pack those in-band, particularly for the case of analog audio, which doesn't have a digital data frame at all. Two are connected across from one connector to the other, so there's only three new wires for the 4 pins. So that's 12/24 pins, 5 wires total. You have two pins per side for USB 2.0. Those get wired to one side only, but are connected together in the device (not the cable). The opposite side pins are unconnected. So two connected and two unconnected new pins per side, and two new wires. 16/24 pins, 7 wires total. Some cables have active transceivers in them, and to ensure that the far-side transceiver is powered, there's an extra wire carrying its supply. This brings us to 8 wires. The remaining 8 pins are mapped to four high-speed differential pairs. The important thing about these is that they ONLY support high-speed low-voltage differential data and are protocol-agnostic. To get the enormous bandwidth the standard needs they have to split them up into four different serial lanes. So it's not a single serial bus. It's 5 serial buses, a handful of power and configuration pins. This brings us up to the full 24 pins (22 of which are in use) and 16 wires (or 18 if you opt for the thinner, doubled-up power and ground wires). It's very much not a serial bus. As for optical cables, that would work, but then you need to transfer all the control signals in-band and either stick to a single signaling standard (and have to do high-speed conversion for everything else) or somehow enclose various protocols in a single frame (like ethernet). This would require a fundamental redesign of peripherals, rather than a small change (a mux and control IC and new port). Additionally, optical transceivers are very expensive and power-hungry at high speeds, to the point where even for extremely high link speeds copper is still being used for ethernet. TOSLINK succeeded because at the very low data rates it has, the optical link hardware is cheap and doesn't use much power.

pier25 9y ago

USB-C is the JavaScript of cables and ports.

irascible 9y ago

It just works.

yoavm 9y ago

I just love the fact I can now charge my laptop and my phone using the same charger - and both charge super fast. I travel often and going with one charger is a life saver. Being able to charge my laptop from my old power bank to get two more hours is also super cool. I remember discovering that some of my Micro-USB cables could only charge and couldn't transmit any data. I honestly don't understand why people talk about the issues with USB-C as if it was a new thing. Seems to me like most of the problems are theoretic and that most end-users are actually happy with the new standard.

marcosscriven 9y ago
I know it's extremely unlikely, I do wish Apple would move its phones and tablets to use USB-C too.
- iwintermute 9y ago
  I can't understand why they won't do it.
  - narrowtux 9y ago
    I think 2 reasons: 1. They already have a lot of accessories for lightning and they would kinda lose that sweet 30 % MFi for 3rd party lightning accessories 2. A lot of people who don't know why USB C is great will probably bitch about how Apple is changing the port on the iPhone _again_, like they did when they switched from 30 pin to lightning. Could be a PR nightmare
    - iwintermute 9y ago
      No PR nightmare is bigger than loss of headphone jack - I imagine lot of people had great and expensive headphones that are no longer usable directly. Apple seems to survived that.
- cnkeller 9y ago
  If memory serves, Apple had a licensing deal with Intel over the lightning port on the iPhones. I can't recall the expiration of the deal, but that's why the laptops already have USB-C and the phones/tablets don't.

erikb 9y ago

Not impossible, just unfinished. I didn't read all the points because it feels like a pointed list, and not really a running text. But it seems to me like I haven't seen a single problem that can't be overcome with fine tuning the USB-C system. E.g. some ports have thunderbolt, some don't. Well it looks like in the future all of them are expected to have thunderbolt or a similar standard. All I'm taking from it is "It's not fully usable yet" and I continue to use normal USB for longer.

Ellipsis753 9y ago

I like USB-C and I buy into the dream a lot. Additionally, the fact that I can plug it in either way around to charge my phone is amazing! The USB-C cable is obviously very capable, it's just a bit of a mess with interoperability. However, given that USB-C requires licencing, I feel like they can probably fix a lot of these issues afterwards by changing what they do and don't allow. (In a way kind of similar to software patches for the licence itself.) For example, I assume they could start charging more to use older USB A/B, drop some supported USB-C features that are kind of messy and start charging more for devices that lazily only sort of implement bits of the specification. The old USB shape has been around for 20 years and counting, if the new USB-C shape is around similarly as long, we have plenty of time to get these issues worked out. (This is already going so much better than ipv6 adoption!)

Friedduck 9y ago

After a month or so of owning a brand-new 15” MBP my regret is that I didn’t buy one of the holdover 2015s. The charger is absurdly large and I have a growing collection of dongles that need to accompany me depending on the task. I’m currently using a Rube Goldberg two-dongle solution to get photos off of an SD card. Moreover I still can’t find what I need for my home office in USB-C. I won’t even get into how much less functional the touchbar is than the hard keys they replace. Terrible user experience.

ksec 9y ago

I think it is clear, the future is mostly wireless. Why would we need a Wired Connection? The only reason we need wired is either Power or High Speed Connection. Power: It is highly unlikely in the next 5 years time we wont have a true wireless power transfer,( i.e not sitting on a Power Mat ), enough energy to power a Laptop, Monitor or Desktop. High Speed: That is anything from Monitor Cable, Massive SSD external storage, External GPU, and.... I cant think of anything else. ( Suggestions Welcome. ) Basically, what Thunderbolt was designed for; External PCI-E and DisplayPort. Sometimes this year or next we are going to finalize what I hope will be the Wireless Standards for decades to come, 802.11ax and 802.11ay. 802.11 ax is the successor of 802.11ac, basically what the industry learned from LTE and LTE-A, and moves the best of those tech across to WiFI, works in both 2.4hGhz and 5Ghz. We could expect real world, uncontended speed of 1Gbps in 2x2, and 2Gbps in 4x4, and both are very conservative numbers. 802.11 ay is successor of the failed 60Ghz 802.11ad. Real world speed 10Gbps+. Bluetooth 5 which and Improves version of 4.1. And Bluetooth 4.1 is the arguable first Bluetooth which really makes it acceptable in general usage, and if 5 improves the better. Assuming no Patents non-sense, we could expect to have WiFi chips in what we are connecting now via cables. You will only need cable for Power and High Speed Connection. And coincidentally Thunderbolt is going to be an Open Standard Next year. What we need to fix / improve is power delivery on USB 3.1 branding. May be Future revision of USB will do that. For now, sitting in a transition period between Wired and Wireless will always be a little painful in the short term.