8 ms·

Are things still that seriously screwed up in the USB-C ecosystem? I was hoping they would have figured things about by now.

MisterTea 9y ago
Up until USB 2.0 and to a degree, 3.0, USB was pretty straight forward in the fact that EVERY USB device plugged in worked. Now you have USB C with a laundry list of supported features and protocols which may or may not be present on your device and most consumers are completely clueless. Does that USB C port on your device support Displayport? Does it do Thunderbolt? Can it be used for charging? What does it do exactly? Too many technical features in a consumer plug.
- nsxwolf 9y ago
  I wonder if they'll ever start giving the plugs different shapes to differentiate them :/
  - wil421 9y ago
    I might have to wait for the plug wars to end before I buy a new laptop. I remember when I thought FireWire was going to be the future...then thunderbolt...display port...usb c...usb n + 1
    - fooey 9y ago
      Apple encumbered tech will never be the tech that wins the future
      - ZenoArrow 9y ago
        Only one of the standards listed was developed by Apple (FireWire). Thunderbolt and USB were both developed by Intel, and DisplayPort was developed by VESA. In all three of those cases Apple was just an early adopter.
        ZenoArrow 9y ago
        To be clear, Apple is a member of VESA, so they may have had some input into the design of DisplayPort. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_Electronics_Standards_Association https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_Electronics_Standards_...
      - wil421 9y ago
        Forgot FireWire was an Apple push. Nice to see they didn’t push lightening cables to Macs. I can name others I adopted on PC including eSATA and Zip Drives.
- doughj3 9y ago
  > most consumers are completely clueless In my experience even many techies are clueless, myself included. I recently purchased a Lenovo* Thunderbolt laptop dock for my new Lenovo laptop that has a USB-C port, but quickly found out that this laptop does not support Thunderbolt: the dock plugs-in fine, but doesn't actually work. Apparently there is a separate "USB-C dock" in addition to their Thunderbolt dock, but I wasn't aware this was something I had to take into consideration. I'm also left wondering what would happen if I took the USB-C charger for the laptop and plugged it into the USB-C port on my phone, or vice versa. How "universal" is USB-C anymore? * I'm not a fan of Lenovo in general but that's what's available through work.
  - wlesieutre 9y ago
    The charging should work if they've adhered to the USB Power Delivery standard. Laptops should be pretty good about this. Basically there are a couple of pairs of voltage/amperage ratings and the charger/device will negotiate the highest rate that both are capable of. It tops out at 100W (5A at 20V). Qualcomm has their own "Quick Charge" system which is not generally compatible. A lot of phones (Samsung) are doing this, but a quick search says it might also work with USB-PD chargers. In other words, it sounds nice but it's actually a bit of a mess. FWIW I use an Anker 5-port + USB-C charger at my desk with a Macbook Pro and it works fine (though it's 29W instead of 61W so it doesn't charge the battery during use). http://www.usb.org/developers/powerdelivery/ http://www.usb.org/developers/powerdelivery/ https://www.reddit.com/r/GalaxyS8/comments/69xox4/the_galaxy_s8_supports_usbpd_5v3a/ https://www.reddit.com/r/GalaxyS8/comments/69xox4/the_galaxy...
  - yorby 9y ago
    isn't Thunderbolt for Apple devices?
    - berbec 9y ago
      It's been around for PCs for a while too. Correct me if I'm wrong, but it started as an Apple/Intel extension to DP. I've yet to see it in an AMD PC yet.
bitL 9y ago
The standard is let's say not so well thought out. You can still kill your computer by plugging in wrong USB-C.
- jsjohnst 9y ago
  I get the point you are trying to make, but there’s a lot of things besides just USB that are susceptible to frying your hardware. The root cause is shitty manufacturing, there’s almost nothing practical the laptop can do to prevent a badly built device from doing at least some kind of damage.
  - leetcrew 9y ago
    sure, but manufacturers seem to be uncommonly bad at implementing the new USB 3.x specs, power delivery in particular. the majority of USB-C cables on sale violate the power delivery spec in important ways.
    - jsjohnst 9y ago
      I haven’t seen or heard of a USB-PD cable issue outside of cheap Chinese knockoff crap. Have you?
      - leetcrew 9y ago
        just going off my memory of this spreadsheet [1]. [1] https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1wJwqv3rTNmORXz-XJsQaXK1dl8I91V4-eP_sfNVNzbA/edit#gid=0 https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1wJwqv3rTNmORXz-XJsQa...
- Dylan16807 9y ago
  You can kill almost any computer if you plug in a power cable that switched hot and ground. That's not a fault of USB-C. It's completely unrelated to the subtleties with resistor marking. Edit: Why the downvotes? Was there any issue with killing computers outside that one batch of backwards cables? Seriously, if a power cable is 100% backwards that's got nothing to do with any standard.
hinkley 9y ago
Expensive or crap. Anker and a couple other companies are slowly chipping away at the problem, but the laptop makers have made the problem worse (see below). One of the newest Anker hubs finally has charge passthrough, a couple usb ports, a video and an ethernet jack for $70. This is the first I've seen in this price/performance ratio. To get a hub with more connectors than that you quickly get to $120, and with twice that many you're talking $200. Apple should have retained a few more ports for a couple of years. The SD card reader and one or two other ports on for a while, and they put the USB-C jacks so close together that you have to use tethers (dongles with 3 inch cables) to plug anything in. The 'small' USB to USB-c adapters you see will overlap the other usb port, so without a dongle you run out of ports quickly. And you know, some of us still put their laptop on a riser when working and now you have all of this shear stress because the dongles aren't long enough to touch the desktop. Dongles floating everywhere.
- ReverseCold 9y ago
  It's just markup, you can get the same hubs (same exact hubs, I verified this by comparing the internals) from AliExpress for $20-50. (Charge pass through, Ethernet, SD, microSD, USB Ports, HDMI 2.0 all in one adapters.)
  - thinkythought 9y ago
    Example links to a couple of the good ones?
    - ReverseCold 9y ago
      The ones I bought were from "WarmSea" and "Dodocool" but I think buying whatever's cheapest and has the ports you need makes sense. It's just a USB hub after all.
      - thinkythought 9y ago
        The main issue is that a lot of USB-C stuff, even now several years in, is still flaky junk that doesn't work as advertised or lists the wrong features
gascan 9y ago
Any replacement of the utterly ubiquitous USB 2.0 & micro-USB 2.0 was always going to take many years. Give it a few more. The Nexus 5X was one of the earliest harbingers, and that was only two years ago.
- danieldk 9y ago
  The MacBook 12" was introduced in April 2015, nearly three years ago, with just one USB-C port and a stereo jack. Nonetheless, USB-C devices have been introduced in a glacial pace (I bought a 12" at the end of 2015 and there was still almost no useful USB-C accessory available). We'll eventually get there and I agree that things will be messy for a while, with USB2-only USB-C charging cables, MacBook Pros that support Thunderbolt over USB-C, MacBooks that don't support Thunderbolt over USB-C, etc. (I do like the plug though, it's reversible and compact.)

MisterTea 9y ago

Up until USB 2.0 and to a degree, 3.0, USB was pretty straight forward in the fact that EVERY USB device plugged in worked. Now you have USB C with a laundry list of supported features and protocols which may or may not be present on your device and most consumers are completely clueless. Does that USB C port on your device support Displayport? Does it do Thunderbolt? Can it be used for charging? What does it do exactly? Too many technical features in a consumer plug.

nsxwolf 9y ago
I wonder if they'll ever start giving the plugs different shapes to differentiate them :/
- wil421 9y ago
  I might have to wait for the plug wars to end before I buy a new laptop. I remember when I thought FireWire was going to be the future...then thunderbolt...display port...usb c...usb n + 1
  - fooey 9y ago
    Apple encumbered tech will never be the tech that wins the future
    - ZenoArrow 9y ago
      Only one of the standards listed was developed by Apple (FireWire). Thunderbolt and USB were both developed by Intel, and DisplayPort was developed by VESA. In all three of those cases Apple was just an early adopter.
      - ZenoArrow 9y ago
        To be clear, Apple is a member of VESA, so they may have had some input into the design of DisplayPort. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_Electronics_Standards_Association https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_Electronics_Standards_...
    - wil421 9y ago
      Forgot FireWire was an Apple push. Nice to see they didn’t push lightening cables to Macs. I can name others I adopted on PC including eSATA and Zip Drives.
doughj3 9y ago
> most consumers are completely clueless In my experience even many techies are clueless, myself included. I recently purchased a Lenovo* Thunderbolt laptop dock for my new Lenovo laptop that has a USB-C port, but quickly found out that this laptop does not support Thunderbolt: the dock plugs-in fine, but doesn't actually work. Apparently there is a separate "USB-C dock" in addition to their Thunderbolt dock, but I wasn't aware this was something I had to take into consideration. I'm also left wondering what would happen if I took the USB-C charger for the laptop and plugged it into the USB-C port on my phone, or vice versa. How "universal" is USB-C anymore? * I'm not a fan of Lenovo in general but that's what's available through work.
- wlesieutre 9y ago
  The charging should work if they've adhered to the USB Power Delivery standard. Laptops should be pretty good about this. Basically there are a couple of pairs of voltage/amperage ratings and the charger/device will negotiate the highest rate that both are capable of. It tops out at 100W (5A at 20V). Qualcomm has their own "Quick Charge" system which is not generally compatible. A lot of phones (Samsung) are doing this, but a quick search says it might also work with USB-PD chargers. In other words, it sounds nice but it's actually a bit of a mess. FWIW I use an Anker 5-port + USB-C charger at my desk with a Macbook Pro and it works fine (though it's 29W instead of 61W so it doesn't charge the battery during use). http://www.usb.org/developers/powerdelivery/ http://www.usb.org/developers/powerdelivery/ https://www.reddit.com/r/GalaxyS8/comments/69xox4/the_galaxy_s8_supports_usbpd_5v3a/ https://www.reddit.com/r/GalaxyS8/comments/69xox4/the_galaxy...
- yorby 9y ago
  isn't Thunderbolt for Apple devices?
  - berbec 9y ago
    It's been around for PCs for a while too. Correct me if I'm wrong, but it started as an Apple/Intel extension to DP. I've yet to see it in an AMD PC yet.

bitL 9y ago

The standard is let's say not so well thought out. You can still kill your computer by plugging in wrong USB-C.

jsjohnst 9y ago
I get the point you are trying to make, but there’s a lot of things besides just USB that are susceptible to frying your hardware. The root cause is shitty manufacturing, there’s almost nothing practical the laptop can do to prevent a badly built device from doing at least some kind of damage.
- leetcrew 9y ago
  sure, but manufacturers seem to be uncommonly bad at implementing the new USB 3.x specs, power delivery in particular. the majority of USB-C cables on sale violate the power delivery spec in important ways.
  - jsjohnst 9y ago
    I haven’t seen or heard of a USB-PD cable issue outside of cheap Chinese knockoff crap. Have you?
    - leetcrew 9y ago
      just going off my memory of this spreadsheet [1]. [1] https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1wJwqv3rTNmORXz-XJsQaXK1dl8I91V4-eP_sfNVNzbA/edit#gid=0 https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1wJwqv3rTNmORXz-XJsQa...
Dylan16807 9y ago
You can kill almost any computer if you plug in a power cable that switched hot and ground. That's not a fault of USB-C. It's completely unrelated to the subtleties with resistor marking. Edit: Why the downvotes? Was there any issue with killing computers outside that one batch of backwards cables? Seriously, if a power cable is 100% backwards that's got nothing to do with any standard.

hinkley 9y ago

Expensive or crap. Anker and a couple other companies are slowly chipping away at the problem, but the laptop makers have made the problem worse (see below). One of the newest Anker hubs finally has charge passthrough, a couple usb ports, a video and an ethernet jack for $70. This is the first I've seen in this price/performance ratio. To get a hub with more connectors than that you quickly get to $120, and with twice that many you're talking $200. Apple should have retained a few more ports for a couple of years. The SD card reader and one or two other ports on for a while, and they put the USB-C jacks so close together that you have to use tethers (dongles with 3 inch cables) to plug anything in. The 'small' USB to USB-c adapters you see will overlap the other usb port, so without a dongle you run out of ports quickly. And you know, some of us still put their laptop on a riser when working and now you have all of this shear stress because the dongles aren't long enough to touch the desktop. Dongles floating everywhere.

ReverseCold 9y ago
It's just markup, you can get the same hubs (same exact hubs, I verified this by comparing the internals) from AliExpress for $20-50. (Charge pass through, Ethernet, SD, microSD, USB Ports, HDMI 2.0 all in one adapters.)
- thinkythought 9y ago
  Example links to a couple of the good ones?
  - ReverseCold 9y ago
    The ones I bought were from "WarmSea" and "Dodocool" but I think buying whatever's cheapest and has the ports you need makes sense. It's just a USB hub after all.
    - thinkythought 9y ago
      The main issue is that a lot of USB-C stuff, even now several years in, is still flaky junk that doesn't work as advertised or lists the wrong features

gascan 9y ago

Any replacement of the utterly ubiquitous USB 2.0 & micro-USB 2.0 was always going to take many years. Give it a few more. The Nexus 5X was one of the earliest harbingers, and that was only two years ago.

danieldk 9y ago
The MacBook 12" was introduced in April 2015, nearly three years ago, with just one USB-C port and a stereo jack. Nonetheless, USB-C devices have been introduced in a glacial pace (I bought a 12" at the end of 2015 and there was still almost no useful USB-C accessory available). We'll eventually get there and I agree that things will be messy for a while, with USB2-only USB-C charging cables, MacBook Pros that support Thunderbolt over USB-C, MacBooks that don't support Thunderbolt over USB-C, etc. (I do like the plug though, it's reversible and compact.)