4 ms·

Replace: USB-C with RJ-45 and his argument is just as silly. It turns out both simplified our lives dramatically, and both require you to do a bit of research

by tw04 6y ago

Replace: USB-C with RJ-45 and his argument is just as silly. It turns out both simplified our lives dramatically, and both require you to do a bit of research before plugging things in. If you don't want to brick your expensive devices, buy approved chargers. No different than being able to buy cheap knock-off batteries for devices off ebay. Will they work most of the time? Sure. Are you risking bricking your device or burning down your house using that $25 laptop battery off ebay? Absolutely.

zrobotics 6y ago
OK, but for example of a problem I recently ran into, I left the (excellent) magnetic surface charger at my office and needed to charge my surface pro 7. Not a problem, I figured my phone charger (pixel) should be fine, if a bit slower. Nope, no dice. I had to Google around to remind myself that "power delivery" is what I need. OK, exceedingly stupid name, but it jogged my memory that the portable battery I have supports that, and I have used it for that before. Cue more frustration when I realize that the only 2 cables I could find at the house don't support this charging standard either. At this point I feel like an absolute idiot, since now I've wasted 1/2 hour plus 2-4 Google searches just to charge a laptop. None of the equipment is a sketchy aliexpress/Amazon no name part, except possibly 1 of the cables. If it's this hard for someone with electronics experience who is into tech, I can't even imagine explaining it to a family member in a way that would make sense.
- rlpb 6y ago
  Some devices have greater power demands than others. So there are two design choices that can be made: (1) require all chargers and cables to support charging all devices; or (2) allow "lesser" chargers and cables. Choosing (1) would have meant that everything would work as you expect, but then even the cheapest devices would have to come with an unnecessarily beefy (and therefore expensive) chargers. Choosing (2) results in potential for the situation that you described. Lesser chargers and cables cannot charge more demanding devices. I'm pretty sure (1) would simply have not been practical. It would have been wasteful and the expense would kill adoption. So they went with (2). Seems reasonable to me.
  - SuperPaintMan 6y ago
    A better solution is to just have a different physical connector so it's obvious at a glance if you have the correct cables. But that: involves carrying another cable, and kind of defeats the purpose of a unifying connector.
    - rlpb 6y ago
      I've bought stuff that supports everything I own, and so I don't have to carry multiple cables or chargers. Different physical connectors would be a step backwards for me.
  - angus-prune 6y ago
    The key missing choice is (3) Make it possible to tell the difference between the cables/devices. Thats what everyone is complaining about, that there is no way to know without trial and error what combination of capabilities across (at a minimum) three different elements you're dealing with. Make it so that we can tell the difference! As per teh articel, they tried to do this with the thunderbolt standard on top of USB-C with a lighting bolt symbol, but even that doesn't mean you know what you're getting in practice. USB3 for instance mandated blue plastic for connectors, so you could tell the difference from previous generations.
cedilla 6y ago
Why would you need to buy "approved" chargers? If the vendor gets to dictate which chargers I buy, I'm worse off than before the days of USB charging. Also, a lot of official chargers are cheap, bulky and slow. Third party does not and has never implied "cheap knockoff". In this case, they aren't knock-offs at all.
- selfhoster11 6y ago
  You don't need an approved charger, just one that's well-made. It's easier to use a well-known brand name as a shorthand during the selection process, because it's generally not feasible for the end user to evaluate a charger on a technical level.
- tw04 6y ago
  You don't, I'm not aware of any vendor that FORCES you to buy their charger, and it's not part of the spec as far as I know. Op is complaining about a charger bricking something - the solution is: buy the approved charger from the vendor. They've tested it, they're telling you it won't brick your device, and I'm confident if it does, they'll replace the device. If you DON'T WANT TO, buy third party. But then don't whine or blame USB-C because you DID buy a cheap charger that bricked your device. That has literally nothing to do with USB-C and everything to do with being penny wise and pound foolish. He's blaming USB-C for something that has nothing to do with USB-C.
vannevar 6y ago
I hear you, but RJ45 never pretended to be anything other than a physical standard. USB-C, on the other hand, is the latest successor to the USB standard, which from the beginning was both a physical specification and a protocol specification. The article correctly points out that there are now so many variations on the protocol implementation that it's confusing to the consumer. And he's clearly right. The whole point is that you shouldn't have to "do a bit of research" before you plug in the only cable connector your device has.
- tw04 6y ago
  Citation? The USB-C specification is the physical specification. All the other stuff is a USB specification but it has nothing to do with USB-C. https://www.usb.org/sites/default/files/usb_type-c_language_product_and_packaging_guidelines_final.pdf https://www.usb.org/sites/default/files/usb_type-c_language_... https://webstore.iec.ch/publication/25676 https://webstore.iec.ch/publication/25676 The layman confusion the USB-PD and USB-3.2 specifications is no different than someone thinking they can get 10gbe over a 1000m cat-5 cable because the ends plug into their 10Gbe adapter.
  - vannevar 6y ago
    You're absolutely right, I stand corrected. But the author's complaint is still legitimate: in the context of billions of consumer devices, the diversity of behaviors is a problem. With RJ45, as long as the cable wasn't defective, it generally wouldn't fail completely. And relatively few consumers ever wired their own networks, whereas virtually everyone has to deal with USB-C-equipped devices.
    - tw04 6y ago
      >With RJ45, as long as the cable wasn't defective, it generally wouldn't fail completely. That's just not true, and I don't mean this to be demeaning but you clearly haven't had to install new hardware into an old datacenter. I can't tell you how many times I've run into situations where a 1Gbe port would auto-negotiate to 10Mbps half-duplex. Did it technically not fail? I guess... but the line was so lossy you couldn't get a ping to complete much less an actual session of any sort.

by tw04 6y ago

zrobotics 6y ago

OK, but for example of a problem I recently ran into, I left the (excellent) magnetic surface charger at my office and needed to charge my surface pro 7. Not a problem, I figured my phone charger (pixel) should be fine, if a bit slower. Nope, no dice. I had to Google around to remind myself that "power delivery" is what I need. OK, exceedingly stupid name, but it jogged my memory that the portable battery I have supports that, and I have used it for that before. Cue more frustration when I realize that the only 2 cables I could find at the house don't support this charging standard either. At this point I feel like an absolute idiot, since now I've wasted 1/2 hour plus 2-4 Google searches just to charge a laptop. None of the equipment is a sketchy aliexpress/Amazon no name part, except possibly 1 of the cables. If it's this hard for someone with electronics experience who is into tech, I can't even imagine explaining it to a family member in a way that would make sense.

rlpb 6y ago
Some devices have greater power demands than others. So there are two design choices that can be made: (1) require all chargers and cables to support charging all devices; or (2) allow "lesser" chargers and cables. Choosing (1) would have meant that everything would work as you expect, but then even the cheapest devices would have to come with an unnecessarily beefy (and therefore expensive) chargers. Choosing (2) results in potential for the situation that you described. Lesser chargers and cables cannot charge more demanding devices. I'm pretty sure (1) would simply have not been practical. It would have been wasteful and the expense would kill adoption. So they went with (2). Seems reasonable to me.
- SuperPaintMan 6y ago
  A better solution is to just have a different physical connector so it's obvious at a glance if you have the correct cables. But that: involves carrying another cable, and kind of defeats the purpose of a unifying connector.
  - rlpb 6y ago
    I've bought stuff that supports everything I own, and so I don't have to carry multiple cables or chargers. Different physical connectors would be a step backwards for me.
- angus-prune 6y ago
  The key missing choice is (3) Make it possible to tell the difference between the cables/devices. Thats what everyone is complaining about, that there is no way to know without trial and error what combination of capabilities across (at a minimum) three different elements you're dealing with. Make it so that we can tell the difference! As per teh articel, they tried to do this with the thunderbolt standard on top of USB-C with a lighting bolt symbol, but even that doesn't mean you know what you're getting in practice. USB3 for instance mandated blue plastic for connectors, so you could tell the difference from previous generations.

cedilla 6y ago

Why would you need to buy "approved" chargers? If the vendor gets to dictate which chargers I buy, I'm worse off than before the days of USB charging. Also, a lot of official chargers are cheap, bulky and slow. Third party does not and has never implied "cheap knockoff". In this case, they aren't knock-offs at all.

selfhoster11 6y ago
You don't need an approved charger, just one that's well-made. It's easier to use a well-known brand name as a shorthand during the selection process, because it's generally not feasible for the end user to evaluate a charger on a technical level.
tw04 6y ago
You don't, I'm not aware of any vendor that FORCES you to buy their charger, and it's not part of the spec as far as I know. Op is complaining about a charger bricking something - the solution is: buy the approved charger from the vendor. They've tested it, they're telling you it won't brick your device, and I'm confident if it does, they'll replace the device. If you DON'T WANT TO, buy third party. But then don't whine or blame USB-C because you DID buy a cheap charger that bricked your device. That has literally nothing to do with USB-C and everything to do with being penny wise and pound foolish. He's blaming USB-C for something that has nothing to do with USB-C.

vannevar 6y ago

I hear you, but RJ45 never pretended to be anything other than a physical standard. USB-C, on the other hand, is the latest successor to the USB standard, which from the beginning was both a physical specification and a protocol specification. The article correctly points out that there are now so many variations on the protocol implementation that it's confusing to the consumer. And he's clearly right. The whole point is that you shouldn't have to "do a bit of research" before you plug in the only cable connector your device has.

tw04 6y ago
Citation? The USB-C specification is the physical specification. All the other stuff is a USB specification but it has nothing to do with USB-C. https://www.usb.org/sites/default/files/usb_type-c_language_product_and_packaging_guidelines_final.pdf https://www.usb.org/sites/default/files/usb_type-c_language_... https://webstore.iec.ch/publication/25676 https://webstore.iec.ch/publication/25676 The layman confusion the USB-PD and USB-3.2 specifications is no different than someone thinking they can get 10gbe over a 1000m cat-5 cable because the ends plug into their 10Gbe adapter.
- vannevar 6y ago
  You're absolutely right, I stand corrected. But the author's complaint is still legitimate: in the context of billions of consumer devices, the diversity of behaviors is a problem. With RJ45, as long as the cable wasn't defective, it generally wouldn't fail completely. And relatively few consumers ever wired their own networks, whereas virtually everyone has to deal with USB-C-equipped devices.
  - tw04 6y ago
    >With RJ45, as long as the cable wasn't defective, it generally wouldn't fail completely. That's just not true, and I don't mean this to be demeaning but you clearly haven't had to install new hardware into an old datacenter. I can't tell you how many times I've run into situations where a 1Gbe port would auto-negotiate to 10Mbps half-duplex. Did it technically not fail? I guess... but the line was so lossy you couldn't get a ping to complete much less an actual session of any sort.