3 ms·

If only it were just about cost, comprehensiveness might be a better way to look at it. I really don't want my laptop's keyboard and trackpad to require clocks

by _wmd 8y ago

If only it were just about cost, comprehensiveness might be a better way to look at it. I really don't want my laptop's keyboard and trackpad to require clocks to drive my clicks and keystrokes at 40Gbps, that's just going to murder batteries and bank accounts for no reason whatsoever. So you're left with a choice in this wonderful alternative non-optional world: some expensive temperature controlled oscillator with accompanying nuclear power plant integrated into every mouse, with a dual core processor just in case the host wishes to speak mouse-over-Thunderbolt, with a 240V connector on the mouse just in case the host wants to charge from it, or mice living on a separate low throughput bus where such requirements don't exist. We had that already, it was called the 1970s-1990s, it was an even bigger mess than what we have now, and is exactly what USB's mandate is to avoid It's not like this is a new problem to USB, it's been a tri-modal specification from the outset to cope with completely different requirements of the peripherals that were to be unified, these horrible recent complexity outcomes are just a natural extension from the early days. It wasn't so long ago that every budget peripheral manufacturer outside of e.g. printers and mice were forced to bundle expansion cards to implement custom busses just so you could talk to their e.g. scanner. This was still the reality of things as late as 1995 or so. Here we didn't just have custom connectors on the back of the machine, but custom cards that had to be installed to implement those connectors. In the 24 years since 1995, outside of display interfaces I count only 2 major new busses to date -- Firewire and USB. That sounds like a success to me

gumby 8y ago
> I really don't want my laptop's keyboard and trackpad to require clocks to drive my clicks and keystrokes at 40Gbps, that's just going to murder batteries and bank accounts for no reason whatsoever. If it makes you feel better: you can make an ultra cheap type C cable that's basically the same as your old Type A cables and will act like your old fashioned cable except you can plug it in either way in any port.
WhitneyLand 8y ago
Not sure you're countering my argument at all because I of course agree we can't just blindly do things that make systems impractical to buy or use. If fact I would certainly be all for a few basic well thought out combinations as mentioned: >>one thing with nothing optional (or at least a very small number of combinations) The problem is, that's not what USB-C/USB-3 whatever is. It's permutations must be in the millions at least, literally. That degree of complexity is simply not necessary to satisfy (forgot 80/20) 99% of users. The 1% (like people here) as usual would have more specialized/flexible/technically oriented options. It's not comparable to counting number of buses or standards. It's more about the sum total of complexity and confusion within a generation of an ecosystem. Especially when manufactures could have better profits and simplify the equation quite a bit by taking looking at things longer term and as an ecosystem. It's ironic that often the "savings" you mention individual manufacturers are trying to achieve is a false dichotomy, which becomes visible only when they are willing to take a step back and look at things more holistically. Often what appears to be only benefiting another company...well you know, the old rising tide lifting all boats thing and so forth and so on...
- johncolanduoni 8y ago
  What are the degrees of freedom in the spec that are resulting in millions of permutations of optional features?
  - rhn_mk1 8y ago
    Not millions, but: - Power Delivery supports some 5 different maximum values - 3 different Battery Charging modes - 5 alternate modes according to Wikipedia (C only) - >10 different plugs (not an independent variable though) - 6 different signalling rates All of those are baked in in the hardware layer. It gets worse when you realize that cables have to support the right combination. It gets even worse when including things that piggyback on USB, like dual-purpose HDMI and USB ports, Thunderbolt, noncompliant chargers (Apple), Quick Charge, audio alternate mode.
  - WhitneyLand 8y ago
    In addition to what RHN said, you've got to count absence of some of those features as another combination so you've got whatever power limits there are and also no power. You've also got cable lengths which I don't believe are limited by the spec but technologically limited. For example you can by 10 foot cables on Amazon but I believe it's currently impossible to buy any 10 foot cable there that has all the features supported that the spec allows for. Effectively this adds just as much complexity as something formally defined as a feature because end users have to deal with the additional variables just the same. I'm really trying to avoid doing enough research and combinatorics that would allow for an exact number but look, we're already at thousands which is ridiculous and you know how quickly the numbers grow with only a handful of additional headaches added in. We're also not counting edge cases like Apples Adapters that are supposed to allow an iOS device to charge while using USB accessories. That's another niche batch of secrets introduced with the 2018 iPad Pros. It only charges using certain combinations not simple requirements like having enough power.

by _wmd 8y ago

gumby 8y ago

> I really don't want my laptop's keyboard and trackpad to require clocks to drive my clicks and keystrokes at 40Gbps, that's just going to murder batteries and bank accounts for no reason whatsoever. If it makes you feel better: you can make an ultra cheap type C cable that's basically the same as your old Type A cables and will act like your old fashioned cable except you can plug it in either way in any port.

WhitneyLand 8y ago

Not sure you're countering my argument at all because I of course agree we can't just blindly do things that make systems impractical to buy or use. If fact I would certainly be all for a few basic well thought out combinations as mentioned: >>one thing with nothing optional (or at least a very small number of combinations) The problem is, that's not what USB-C/USB-3 whatever is. It's permutations must be in the millions at least, literally. That degree of complexity is simply not necessary to satisfy (forgot 80/20) 99% of users. The 1% (like people here) as usual would have more specialized/flexible/technically oriented options. It's not comparable to counting number of buses or standards. It's more about the sum total of complexity and confusion within a generation of an ecosystem. Especially when manufactures could have better profits and simplify the equation quite a bit by taking looking at things longer term and as an ecosystem. It's ironic that often the "savings" you mention individual manufacturers are trying to achieve is a false dichotomy, which becomes visible only when they are willing to take a step back and look at things more holistically. Often what appears to be only benefiting another company...well you know, the old rising tide lifting all boats thing and so forth and so on...

johncolanduoni 8y ago
What are the degrees of freedom in the spec that are resulting in millions of permutations of optional features?
- rhn_mk1 8y ago
  Not millions, but: - Power Delivery supports some 5 different maximum values - 3 different Battery Charging modes - 5 alternate modes according to Wikipedia (C only) - >10 different plugs (not an independent variable though) - 6 different signalling rates All of those are baked in in the hardware layer. It gets worse when you realize that cables have to support the right combination. It gets even worse when including things that piggyback on USB, like dual-purpose HDMI and USB ports, Thunderbolt, noncompliant chargers (Apple), Quick Charge, audio alternate mode.
- WhitneyLand 8y ago
  In addition to what RHN said, you've got to count absence of some of those features as another combination so you've got whatever power limits there are and also no power. You've also got cable lengths which I don't believe are limited by the spec but technologically limited. For example you can by 10 foot cables on Amazon but I believe it's currently impossible to buy any 10 foot cable there that has all the features supported that the spec allows for. Effectively this adds just as much complexity as something formally defined as a feature because end users have to deal with the additional variables just the same. I'm really trying to avoid doing enough research and combinatorics that would allow for an exact number but look, we're already at thousands which is ridiculous and you know how quickly the numbers grow with only a handful of additional headaches added in. We're also not counting edge cases like Apples Adapters that are supposed to allow an iOS device to charge while using USB accessories. That's another niche batch of secrets introduced with the 2018 iPad Pros. It only charges using certain combinations not simple requirements like having enough power.