3 ms·

Those cables were distinct upon physical inspection (missing pins), which USB C cables are not.

by tpxl 6y ago

leetcrew 6y ago
sure, if you're familiar with the pinout, you can tell whether the data or power lines are completely missing. there was still no guarantee that any arbitrary cable would work with whatever fast charge implementation you were using. you would likely get 0.5A trickle charging at least, but the device could also just refuse to charge at all. from my perspective, USB-IF has taken a bunch of random shit that manufacturers were going to do anyway and made them proper (though optional) parts of the spec. I understand it didn't work out perfectly, but I don't really understand why they are getting so much flak for it. I'd much rather have a bunch of cables and devices that at least try to meet an official spec than to have a bunch of proprietary implementations that make no effort at being compatible.
- tpxl 6y ago
  >sure, if you're familiar with the pinout Literally half the pins are missing on charge-only cables. >but I don't really understand why they are getting so much flak for it. From me, because my partner bought an USB-C to 3.5mm jack converter that refused to work with "this device only supports official huawei converters". That, and two completely different cables with almost disjoint functionality look _the same_. If they mandated color coding or anything else to be able to physically determine what cable is what, I wouldn't complain. That all said, the _charging_ story is decent enough, everything else is garbage.
  - leetcrew 6y ago
    > Literally half the pins are missing on charge-only cables. okay, but unless you know which pins are missing, how do you know you're not looking at a data-only cable? > From me, because my partner bought an USB-C to 3.5mm jack converter that refused to work with "this device only supports official huawei converters". That, and two completely different cables with almost disjoint functionality look _the same_. If they mandated color coding or anything else to be able to physically determine what cable is what, I wouldn't complain. this sounds like more of a huawei issue than a USB-C issue. if a manufacturer is just going to refuse to support a standards-compliant cable, you're out of luck either way. color coding would be nice though, they could have made that mandatory rather than recommended. I'm sure companies like apple wouldn't give a fuck either way and would just go with whatever looked aesthetically pleasing, USB-IF cert be damned. > That all said, the _charging_ story is decent enough, everything else is garbage. what "everything else" is garbage? there are higher speed variants, but you seem to already consider it reasonable to look at pins, so that shouldn't be a problem for you. thunderbolt support doesn't need any special pins; it just needs a high quality cable, which is analogous to the charging situation for this and the previous generation.
    - tpxl 6y ago
      >okay, but unless you know which pins are missing, how do you know you're not looking at a data-only cable? You know it's a different cable and that's enough. >this sounds like more of a huawei issue than a USB-C issue. if a manufacturer is just going to refuse to support a standards-compliant cable, you're out of luck either way. color coding would be nice though, they could have made that mandatory rather than recommended. I'm sure companies like apple wouldn't give a fuck either way and would just go with whatever looked aesthetically pleasing, USB-IF cert be damned. That is made possible by USB-C standard. USB-A and USB-B cables were too dumb to support that. >you seem to already consider it reasonable to look at pins The pinouts are the same for all different types of cables. It is literally impossible to differentiate cables based on visual inspection. The USB-C standard is a unified charger and a bunch of different cables in with the same connector.
kalleboo 6y ago
No they're not. I just grabbed a power-only microUSB cable out of my cable box (it came with a microUSB-powered soap dispenser!), and it has all the pins, but only the power pins are actually wired.

Those cables were distinct upon physical inspection (missing pins), which USB C cables are not.

by tpxl 6y ago

Those cables were distinct upon physical inspection (missing pins), which USB C cables are not.

sure, if you're familiar with the pinout, you can tell whether the data or power lines are completely missing. there was still no guarantee that any arbitrary cable would work with whatever fast charge implementation you were using. you would likely get 0.5A trickle charging at least, but the device could also just refuse to charge at all. from my perspective, USB-IF has taken a bunch of random shit that manufacturers were going to do anyway and made them proper (though optional) parts of the spec. I understand it didn't work out perfectly, but I don't really understand why they are getting so much flak for it. I'd much rather have a bunch of cables and devices that at least try to meet an official spec than to have a bunch of proprietary implementations that make no effort at being compatible.

tpxl 6y ago
>sure, if you're familiar with the pinout Literally half the pins are missing on charge-only cables. >but I don't really understand why they are getting so much flak for it. From me, because my partner bought an USB-C to 3.5mm jack converter that refused to work with "this device only supports official huawei converters". That, and two completely different cables with almost disjoint functionality look _the same_. If they mandated color coding or anything else to be able to physically determine what cable is what, I wouldn't complain. That all said, the _charging_ story is decent enough, everything else is garbage.
- leetcrew 6y ago
  > Literally half the pins are missing on charge-only cables. okay, but unless you know which pins are missing, how do you know you're not looking at a data-only cable? > From me, because my partner bought an USB-C to 3.5mm jack converter that refused to work with "this device only supports official huawei converters". That, and two completely different cables with almost disjoint functionality look _the same_. If they mandated color coding or anything else to be able to physically determine what cable is what, I wouldn't complain. this sounds like more of a huawei issue than a USB-C issue. if a manufacturer is just going to refuse to support a standards-compliant cable, you're out of luck either way. color coding would be nice though, they could have made that mandatory rather than recommended. I'm sure companies like apple wouldn't give a fuck either way and would just go with whatever looked aesthetically pleasing, USB-IF cert be damned. > That all said, the _charging_ story is decent enough, everything else is garbage. what "everything else" is garbage? there are higher speed variants, but you seem to already consider it reasonable to look at pins, so that shouldn't be a problem for you. thunderbolt support doesn't need any special pins; it just needs a high quality cable, which is analogous to the charging situation for this and the previous generation.
  - tpxl 6y ago
    >okay, but unless you know which pins are missing, how do you know you're not looking at a data-only cable? You know it's a different cable and that's enough. >this sounds like more of a huawei issue than a USB-C issue. if a manufacturer is just going to refuse to support a standards-compliant cable, you're out of luck either way. color coding would be nice though, they could have made that mandatory rather than recommended. I'm sure companies like apple wouldn't give a fuck either way and would just go with whatever looked aesthetically pleasing, USB-IF cert be damned. That is made possible by USB-C standard. USB-A and USB-B cables were too dumb to support that. >you seem to already consider it reasonable to look at pins The pinouts are the same for all different types of cables. It is literally impossible to differentiate cables based on visual inspection. The USB-C standard is a unified charger and a bunch of different cables in with the same connector.

kalleboo 6y ago

No they're not. I just grabbed a power-only microUSB cable out of my cable box (it came with a microUSB-powered soap dispenser!), and it has all the pins, but only the power pins are actually wired.