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With a MacBook Pro it’s not so bad, because rather than try to save a few cents Apple wired every USB-C port for everything that it supports, so there’s no real

With a MacBook Pro it’s not so bad, because rather than try to save a few cents Apple wired every USB-C port for everything that it supports, so there’s no real distinction between ports (but you still need to distinguish between very similar looking cables that handle, say USB 3.0 in one case and an active TB3 40 Gbps in another) It’s at the low end of the market that USB-C is an entire mess. This port on your laptop can connect to the charger, but this one doesn’t. All of them do 3.0, but this one does 3.1. This one does DisplayPort but not that one. None do Thunderbolt 3 but you had to read the specs twice and guess that from the fact it’s just not mentioned. Hard for regular consumers to understand, and remember, when it all looks the same.

manacit 7y ago
If I'm remembering correctly, it's not that far off from the (blue?) color coding with the USB A connector to indicate USB 3 support for particular ports? Either way, when power gets involved as well, that is a terrible user experience. I had a friend bring over a Dell laptop with a USB C port that I naively assumed had TB3 support (it was listed as being "optional" on Dell's website). Turns out that the only way to actually know was to either watch it not work with a Dock, or to go into the BIOS and witness some missing settings that indicated TB3 support was not present. For better or for worse, though, that's a manufacturer problem - they could have easily just not allowed _any_ USB C charging and stuck with an AC adapter, or spent the extra coin to make all of the ports work with a TB controller, etc. Companies have been making user-hostile decisions in the name of cost cuttings (1366x768 screens in 2018) forever, it seems like USB C is just another avenue for that.
- vxNsr 7y ago
  My understanding of Dell's implementation is that the TB port has a little thunderbolt next to it while the usb-c one doesn't.
  - Dylan16807 7y ago
    Not to be confused with the little thunderbolt next to some USB ports that indicates charging capability.
    - vmlinuz 7y ago
      Clearly, that's a lightning bolt rather than a thunderbolt. Very very frightening. Not to be confused with Apple's Lightning connector, of course...
- bscphil 7y ago
  > For better or for worse, though, that's a manufacturer problem - they could have easily just not allowed _any_ USB C charging and stuck with an AC adapter For what it's worth, I personally would be thrilled by such a decision. I'm against having my power supplied through a data cable and data port. In theory it's safe, of course, but in practice people have fried equipment with bad cables. It's a hard standard to get right. It's as if we were all using Rust for systems programming up until 2016, when we all switched to C because it was "more powerful". In theory you can write safe C. In practice ... I also think display connections should have their own interface. It needlessly complicates the protocol when we already have perfectly good connectors for this, HDMI, micro-HDMI, Displayport... USB should be a dumb protocol with a passive cable. The only distinguishing feature between different USB C cables should be transfer speed, and different rates should be given a clearly labeled version number and distinguishing color, like USB 3.1, 3.2 etc. Of course no one's actually going to implement this, probably the companies involved profit off of incompatibilities. Whenever you have to buy a new cable or new device because it's not supported by the old standard, it's proof this approach is winning.
Yizahi 7y ago
Except that even Apple forgot certain options in their 50$ USB-C charger and it is therefore non-compliant with specification. Apparently USB-C is hard. source: https://twitter.com/USBCGuy https://twitter.com/USBCGuy
- msbarnett 7y ago
  Yeah that’s a whole extra layer of fun. On top of the incompatible matrix of protocols you’ve got all of these devices (the Apple charger, the Nintendo Switch Dock, the Raspberry Pi 4, probably any number of cheap gadgets with bad USB-C ports) that don’t even work with things they should be compatible with. USB-C is the wild godammned west.
- Rebelgecko 7y ago
  On some Macbooks, the USB-C on the left and right side don't support the same max bandwidth

manacit 7y ago

If I'm remembering correctly, it's not that far off from the (blue?) color coding with the USB A connector to indicate USB 3 support for particular ports? Either way, when power gets involved as well, that is a terrible user experience. I had a friend bring over a Dell laptop with a USB C port that I naively assumed had TB3 support (it was listed as being "optional" on Dell's website). Turns out that the only way to actually know was to either watch it not work with a Dock, or to go into the BIOS and witness some missing settings that indicated TB3 support was not present. For better or for worse, though, that's a manufacturer problem - they could have easily just not allowed _any_ USB C charging and stuck with an AC adapter, or spent the extra coin to make all of the ports work with a TB controller, etc. Companies have been making user-hostile decisions in the name of cost cuttings (1366x768 screens in 2018) forever, it seems like USB C is just another avenue for that.

vxNsr 7y ago
My understanding of Dell's implementation is that the TB port has a little thunderbolt next to it while the usb-c one doesn't.
- Dylan16807 7y ago
  Not to be confused with the little thunderbolt next to some USB ports that indicates charging capability.
  - vmlinuz 7y ago
    Clearly, that's a lightning bolt rather than a thunderbolt. Very very frightening. Not to be confused with Apple's Lightning connector, of course...
bscphil 7y ago
> For better or for worse, though, that's a manufacturer problem - they could have easily just not allowed _any_ USB C charging and stuck with an AC adapter For what it's worth, I personally would be thrilled by such a decision. I'm against having my power supplied through a data cable and data port. In theory it's safe, of course, but in practice people have fried equipment with bad cables. It's a hard standard to get right. It's as if we were all using Rust for systems programming up until 2016, when we all switched to C because it was "more powerful". In theory you can write safe C. In practice ... I also think display connections should have their own interface. It needlessly complicates the protocol when we already have perfectly good connectors for this, HDMI, micro-HDMI, Displayport... USB should be a dumb protocol with a passive cable. The only distinguishing feature between different USB C cables should be transfer speed, and different rates should be given a clearly labeled version number and distinguishing color, like USB 3.1, 3.2 etc. Of course no one's actually going to implement this, probably the companies involved profit off of incompatibilities. Whenever you have to buy a new cable or new device because it's not supported by the old standard, it's proof this approach is winning.

Yizahi 7y ago

Except that even Apple forgot certain options in their 50$ USB-C charger and it is therefore non-compliant with specification. Apparently USB-C is hard. source: https://twitter.com/USBCGuy https://twitter.com/USBCGuy

msbarnett 7y ago
Yeah that’s a whole extra layer of fun. On top of the incompatible matrix of protocols you’ve got all of these devices (the Apple charger, the Nintendo Switch Dock, the Raspberry Pi 4, probably any number of cheap gadgets with bad USB-C ports) that don’t even work with things they should be compatible with. USB-C is the wild godammned west.
Rebelgecko 7y ago
On some Macbooks, the USB-C on the left and right side don't support the same max bandwidth