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> Is it something about cost? It's hugely about: cost, and the desire of the USB forum to ship a single "does everything" protocol that keeps a large chunk of

> Is it something about cost? It's hugely about: cost, and the desire of the USB forum to ship a single "does everything" protocol that keeps a large chunk of the industry from choosing to stay on some old version of the spec forever. Tons and tons of manufacturers of cheap low end devices out there aren't willing to replace a $0.10 USB controller with something that costs 30x as much when they have no need for the high-end speeds of Thunderbolt 3, fast charging, DisplayPort alternate modes, etc. Consequently the spec can either contain a lot of optional features they can choose to ignore, or it can mandate support for all of the 40 Gbps active cable fast charging etc options, and watch as devices partition themselves between the few the need all of that stuff, and the majority that ship simple micro-USB 2.0 hardware. If they did the latter, then USB 4 is essentially pointless: that's the exact situation we were already in 5+ years ago, except the cheap side was called "USB 2" and the expensive side was called "Thunderbolt". All we've done is rename the expensive side to "USB 4". If they do the former, they ship a "spec" so full of options that it's already nearly impossible to tell exactly what devices or features any given USB C port will support without recourse to a specifications sheet. Fundamentally, "one port and protocol to rule them all" is probably just a bad idea. Trying to serve the needs of both cheap slow devices and expensive fast ones puts the forum in a contradictory position, and the only "benefit" from combining the standards that serve each niche is opaque ports and cables that consumers can't easily reason about the compatibility of.

rowanG077 7y ago
I feel that all of this would be MUCH less of a problem with simple code that are required on each USB cable with the exact specs it supports. This code could be put into a tool which then decodes to show what exactly that cable supports.
- Kalium 7y ago
  This works until some mgf decides it's easier to claim to support everything, ships a simple controller that does that, it gets widely used, and a lot of harware becomes mysteriously incompatible as a result. Trusting vendors to be honest in declaring capabilities is not always the best of all possible approaches, historically.
  - rkagerer 7y ago
    Make 'em get certified, if they' re caught cheating they lose their license to stamp the logo.
    - Kalium 7y ago
      As I understand it, one of the reasons earlier iterations of the USB standard were popular with manufacturers was that it was logistically and administratively easy. You didn't have to license a bunch of expensive patents and certification is quite easy. Going against that might be possible, but it strikes me as perhaps difficult to get implementors to go along with.
    - gsich 7y ago
      As if a logo on a cable is important.
      - TheGoddessInari 7y ago
        For Display Port cables, if they're not certified, you run the risk of strange hardware faults at best, smoking hardware at presumably worst. USB4 is tremendously more dangerous if the cable does something really wrong.
        gsich 7y ago
        The problem is that you don't know if the logo is valid. Anyone can just print it on their product. Even buying from Amazon won't save you all the time.
      - solarkraft 7y ago
        To me it'd have been immensely helpful. If there had been 2 manufacturers with a logo (or a clear spec), I'd certainly have bought from them.
    - xienze 7y ago
      Do you really think a Chinese manufacturer of cheap cables cares if they’re displaying various logos with the proper license or not otherwise misleading customers? Look up the whole “CE” vs “China Export” thing...
- deathanatos 7y ago
  I would agree with this idea… except device manufacturers can't even manage to not put the port in backwards, or print the labeling on the wrong side of the connector. (Yes, the standard mandates a particular orientation for the ports. But there's so many non-compliant devices out there, good luck knowing that.) I don't think they'd get such a thing even remotely close. There's just too much low quality crap out there.
- Spoom 7y ago
  I thought this was the idea behind the USB-C eMarker.
TeMPOraL 7y ago
Wait, isn't the whole problem with the cables and not the ports? It matters little what subset of USB any given device supports. No reasonable person will expect, say, high-speed video from a cheap mp3 player, just because it's the same USB as their screen. However, it's perfectly reasonable to use the cable that came with aforementioned mp3 player to connect a computer to a screen, and expect the video signal to be carried through. I don't see a good reason why cables shouldn't be required to carry everything USB supports.
- mavhc 7y ago
  Same problem, now your cable costs 10x more
  - TeMPOraL 7y ago
    Since there would be only one type of cable, economies of scale would be massive. Even if they didn't eat all the cost, so what. Cost of the cable is a fraction of the cost of a device, and the whole point of doing a universal protocol is that you can use cables from one device with a different device.
    - msbarnett 7y ago
      The 40 Gbps speeds of Thunderbolt 3/USB 4 are sustainable over only very short runs with passive cables -- anything longer than about 50 centimeters requires active circuitry. There is no level of manufacturing scale that will make an active signal cable cheaper than an equivalent-length passive one, and cable manufacturers, who live and die on razor thin margins, are never going to be convinced to forgo the cost savings of building cheaper passive cables when their client's devices don't even use the higher speeds the active circuitry is required for.
      - TeMPOraL 7y ago
        Huh. Fair point about data rates, but then again, I'm not sure if forcing manufacturers into a single, active cable would be impossible. Standardizing a single cable type shouldn't impact the margins on cable sales - whether the cable costs $0.1 or $10, every manufacturer will have the same costs (in the limit). > to forgo the cost savings of building cheaper passive cables when their client's devices don't even use the higher speeds the active circuitry is required for. That's why I think standardization should disallow this very attempt at costs savings. A given device may only need a passive cable, but as a user, I want to be able to use that cable with a different device. Moreover, cables are often bought separately (e.g. replacements). It's already a huge problem with USB 2/3 - buying a cable is a lottery wrt. transfer rates and charging amperages. (The last time I lost that lottery I happened to be in China, so I went to a local seller with a voltage measurement app, and started testing cables they offered one by one. After finally finding a cable that could push proper 2+ amps, I bought something around 60 of them, because back home, everyone sells USB cables packaged in hard plastic, so I wouldn't even be able to run this test.)
bscphil 7y ago
> It's hugely about: cost, and the desire of the USB forum to ship a single "does everything" protocol that keeps a large chunk of the industry from choosing to stay on some old version of the spec forever. Yep. Significantly, their incentives are the exact opposite of mine as a consumer.
jayd16 7y ago
>Fundamentally, "one port and protocol to rule them all" is probably just a bad idea I disagree. The situations are: 1)ports are the same, protocol match : works 2)ports are the same, protocol mismatch : won't work, some user confusion 3)ports are different, protocol match : could work but won't without an adapter 4)ports are different, protocol mismatch : won't work. Adapters might exist but those won't work either. I'd much rather deal with situation 2 over 3 and 4. Display adapters already have situations where you can get adapters to cobble together DVI and VGA ports but still fail to get a proper connection, so its not really a fix anyway. The USB foundation should just come up with better branding around what kinds of things a port supports. No reason we can't have a thunderbolt icon next on a USB port. Its strictly better than a new physical port, IMO.
- chrisweekly 7y ago
  Pardon my ignorance, but isn't (2) really dangerous when it comes to things like power delivery?
  - hunter2_ 7y ago
    There's nothing dangerous about drawing less current than is available, or a device trying to upgrade voltage and/or current from a base level (5V 500mA) but being disappointed when the source can't oblige.
  - spancap 7y ago
    (2) has killed people, such as the patient who was electrocuted in 1986 due to an IV pump power supply using the same connector as EKG leads. (Casey, "Set Phasers On Stun" 2nd edition, pp.177-180)
    - hannasanarion 7y ago
      USB doesn't automatically deliver maximum power to whatever is plugged into it. The client device has to ask for it. The default 5v 500mA isn't going to hurt anybody.
leetcrew 7y ago
> It's hugely about: cost, and the desire of the USB forum to ship a single "does everything" protocol that keeps a large chunk of the industry from choosing to stay on some old version of the spec forever. why is it so bad if they stay on the old version? AFAIK, usb already bends over backwards to support every older version of the spec. imo, it would be great if USB3.x supported all the latest extensions, USB2 was still kinda fast, and USB1 could still be useful for that really old device you have sitting around (or if you just want to be able to trickle charge a phone with the only micro-usb you have around).
akelly 7y ago
"one port to rule them all" would work fine if the computer could just show a popup explaining why your peripheral wasn't running in the mode it's supposed to.
usrusr 7y ago
> watch as devices partition themselves between the few the need all of that stuff, and the majority that ship simple micro-USB 2.0 hardware What's wrong with that? Just create a little spec addendum for USB 2 that officially allows the use of modern physical connectors. It would be so much better in any metric other than deliberate customer confusion than a big, bold "USB $some_high_number" claim with practically invisible fine print admitting that it only supports some obscure subset of the new specification that happens to be exactly USB 2. The partition happens no matter what.

rowanG077 7y ago

I feel that all of this would be MUCH less of a problem with simple code that are required on each USB cable with the exact specs it supports. This code could be put into a tool which then decodes to show what exactly that cable supports.

Kalium 7y ago
This works until some mgf decides it's easier to claim to support everything, ships a simple controller that does that, it gets widely used, and a lot of harware becomes mysteriously incompatible as a result. Trusting vendors to be honest in declaring capabilities is not always the best of all possible approaches, historically.
- rkagerer 7y ago
  Make 'em get certified, if they' re caught cheating they lose their license to stamp the logo.
  - Kalium 7y ago
    As I understand it, one of the reasons earlier iterations of the USB standard were popular with manufacturers was that it was logistically and administratively easy. You didn't have to license a bunch of expensive patents and certification is quite easy. Going against that might be possible, but it strikes me as perhaps difficult to get implementors to go along with.
  - gsich 7y ago
    As if a logo on a cable is important.
    - TheGoddessInari 7y ago
      For Display Port cables, if they're not certified, you run the risk of strange hardware faults at best, smoking hardware at presumably worst. USB4 is tremendously more dangerous if the cable does something really wrong.
      - gsich 7y ago
        The problem is that you don't know if the logo is valid. Anyone can just print it on their product. Even buying from Amazon won't save you all the time.
    - solarkraft 7y ago
      To me it'd have been immensely helpful. If there had been 2 manufacturers with a logo (or a clear spec), I'd certainly have bought from them.
  - xienze 7y ago
    Do you really think a Chinese manufacturer of cheap cables cares if they’re displaying various logos with the proper license or not otherwise misleading customers? Look up the whole “CE” vs “China Export” thing...
deathanatos 7y ago
I would agree with this idea… except device manufacturers can't even manage to not put the port in backwards, or print the labeling on the wrong side of the connector. (Yes, the standard mandates a particular orientation for the ports. But there's so many non-compliant devices out there, good luck knowing that.) I don't think they'd get such a thing even remotely close. There's just too much low quality crap out there.
Spoom 7y ago
I thought this was the idea behind the USB-C eMarker.

TeMPOraL 7y ago

Wait, isn't the whole problem with the cables and not the ports? It matters little what subset of USB any given device supports. No reasonable person will expect, say, high-speed video from a cheap mp3 player, just because it's the same USB as their screen. However, it's perfectly reasonable to use the cable that came with aforementioned mp3 player to connect a computer to a screen, and expect the video signal to be carried through. I don't see a good reason why cables shouldn't be required to carry everything USB supports.

mavhc 7y ago
Same problem, now your cable costs 10x more
- TeMPOraL 7y ago
  Since there would be only one type of cable, economies of scale would be massive. Even if they didn't eat all the cost, so what. Cost of the cable is a fraction of the cost of a device, and the whole point of doing a universal protocol is that you can use cables from one device with a different device.
  - msbarnett 7y ago
    The 40 Gbps speeds of Thunderbolt 3/USB 4 are sustainable over only very short runs with passive cables -- anything longer than about 50 centimeters requires active circuitry. There is no level of manufacturing scale that will make an active signal cable cheaper than an equivalent-length passive one, and cable manufacturers, who live and die on razor thin margins, are never going to be convinced to forgo the cost savings of building cheaper passive cables when their client's devices don't even use the higher speeds the active circuitry is required for.
    - TeMPOraL 7y ago
      Huh. Fair point about data rates, but then again, I'm not sure if forcing manufacturers into a single, active cable would be impossible. Standardizing a single cable type shouldn't impact the margins on cable sales - whether the cable costs $0.1 or $10, every manufacturer will have the same costs (in the limit). > to forgo the cost savings of building cheaper passive cables when their client's devices don't even use the higher speeds the active circuitry is required for. That's why I think standardization should disallow this very attempt at costs savings. A given device may only need a passive cable, but as a user, I want to be able to use that cable with a different device. Moreover, cables are often bought separately (e.g. replacements). It's already a huge problem with USB 2/3 - buying a cable is a lottery wrt. transfer rates and charging amperages. (The last time I lost that lottery I happened to be in China, so I went to a local seller with a voltage measurement app, and started testing cables they offered one by one. After finally finding a cable that could push proper 2+ amps, I bought something around 60 of them, because back home, everyone sells USB cables packaged in hard plastic, so I wouldn't even be able to run this test.)

bscphil 7y ago

jayd16 7y ago

>Fundamentally, "one port and protocol to rule them all" is probably just a bad idea I disagree. The situations are: 1)ports are the same, protocol match : works 2)ports are the same, protocol mismatch : won't work, some user confusion 3)ports are different, protocol match : could work but won't without an adapter 4)ports are different, protocol mismatch : won't work. Adapters might exist but those won't work either. I'd much rather deal with situation 2 over 3 and 4. Display adapters already have situations where you can get adapters to cobble together DVI and VGA ports but still fail to get a proper connection, so its not really a fix anyway. The USB foundation should just come up with better branding around what kinds of things a port supports. No reason we can't have a thunderbolt icon next on a USB port. Its strictly better than a new physical port, IMO.

chrisweekly 7y ago
Pardon my ignorance, but isn't (2) really dangerous when it comes to things like power delivery?
- hunter2_ 7y ago
  There's nothing dangerous about drawing less current than is available, or a device trying to upgrade voltage and/or current from a base level (5V 500mA) but being disappointed when the source can't oblige.
- spancap 7y ago
  (2) has killed people, such as the patient who was electrocuted in 1986 due to an IV pump power supply using the same connector as EKG leads. (Casey, "Set Phasers On Stun" 2nd edition, pp.177-180)
  - hannasanarion 7y ago
    USB doesn't automatically deliver maximum power to whatever is plugged into it. The client device has to ask for it. The default 5v 500mA isn't going to hurt anybody.

leetcrew 7y ago

> It's hugely about: cost, and the desire of the USB forum to ship a single "does everything" protocol that keeps a large chunk of the industry from choosing to stay on some old version of the spec forever. why is it so bad if they stay on the old version? AFAIK, usb already bends over backwards to support every older version of the spec. imo, it would be great if USB3.x supported all the latest extensions, USB2 was still kinda fast, and USB1 could still be useful for that really old device you have sitting around (or if you just want to be able to trickle charge a phone with the only micro-usb you have around).

akelly 7y ago

"one port to rule them all" would work fine if the computer could just show a popup explaining why your peripheral wasn't running in the mode it's supposed to.

usrusr 7y ago

> watch as devices partition themselves between the few the need all of that stuff, and the majority that ship simple micro-USB 2.0 hardware What's wrong with that? Just create a little spec addendum for USB 2 that officially allows the use of modern physical connectors. It would be so much better in any metric other than deliberate customer confusion than a big, bold "USB $some_high_number" claim with practically invisible fine print admitting that it only supports some obscure subset of the new specification that happens to be exactly USB 2. The partition happens no matter what.