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> What’s a simple USB hub? The quintessential "simple USB hub": https://www.amazon.ca/UGREEN-Adapter-MacBook-Chromebook-Pixelbook/dp/B07PY87TBD/ref=sr_1_5?keyw

• tshaddox 5y ago
  I think the point is that the built-in ports on your computer might support any combination of a large number of possible features, and that it is difficult/expensive to make a hub that supports all of them, and people would hate a hub that happens to not support one particular feature that their computer’s built-in ports support.
  • derefr 5y ago
    But this is what I meant by: > you can plug USB-A-to-C cables into this hub, and it'd be exactly the same as plugging USB-C-to-C cables into a hypothetical USB-C-replicating hub I.e., anything you can plug into a USB-C port using a C-to-C cable, you can plug into a USB-A port using an A-to-C cable. So if the problem is idiots thinking "if it connects, it should work" — then wouldn't these same idiots be complaining that their Thunderbolt peripherals, external USB-C monitors, etc. don't work when plugged into one of these simple C-to-A hubs via an A-to-C cable? But that doesn't seem to stop the C-to-A hubs from existing.
    • tshaddox 5y ago
      It’s not at all unreasonable for consumers to want a USB hub to function like “just give my computer more ports.” So no, it wouldn’t be unreasonable or idiotic to expect something that works plugged directly into your computer to also work when plugged into your computer via a hub. It is less reasonable for a consumer to expect that any chain of adapters or cables that uses multiple totally different types/generations of connector would still support every feature of the computer’s built-in port.
    • Al-Khwarizmi 5y ago
      > idiots thinking "if it connects, it should work" You mean thinking things will work in the reasonable way that they have for decades prior to USB-C? "If it connects, it should work" used to be largely true (modulo OS compatibility, which was easy to check by users, and wasn't even an issue anyway if you had a reasonably recent Windows version). It's hard to blame the users for not understanding why things have been suddenly made much more complicated by a standard that supposedly simplifies things.
      • Someone 5y ago
        > “If it connects, it should work" used to be largely true Have you ever worked with DB-9 or DB-25 serial cables? If you had a cable that was wired correctly for the connection you wanted to make, it should indeed work, but you still would have to figure out baud rate, number of stop bits, and parity. Detecting what kind of null-modem cable you had basically came down to getting out your multimeter. On PCs, you also had the traditional parallel port (mostly unidirectional, with IIRC two bits of information that a printer could send back: “don’t send more data; I’m busy handling the earlier data”, and “out of paper”) versus the much faster, bidirectional iteration that was used to connect such things as hard drives and CD players.
      • derefr 5y ago
        > "If it connects, it should work" used to be largely true Gods no! There are innumerable devices with D-sub, mini-DIN, RJ-11, RCA, or TRS connectors, that put those connectors to entirely different and incompatible purposes. With entirely-incompatible electrical standards, even, such that plugging client-devices intended for one purpose into host-devices intended for a different purpose will electrically short one or both. Remember the iPod Shuffle's "USB-A to TRRS" cable? Guess what happens when you try to use that cable to, say, plug your computer into your hi-fi? Or — less absurdly — into your TI-84 calculator? The "Universal" in USB is in contrast to the DB-9 serial port, which was decidedly not universal. Yes, there were actual "serial ports" and "serial port devices" — the spec is called EIA/TIA 232, if you're curious — but there were tons of other things that used DB-9 connectors (male or female) but weren't EIA/TIA 232 devices. Plug one of those into a serial port, and poof! — there goes the magic smoke. You don't have to worry about that with USB (including USB-C); USB ports and cables all follow a single unified electrical pin-out specification, whatever they're carrying. Even USB-C devices that mis-implement features like USB-PD (e.g. the Nintendo Switch) won't ever start an electrical fire, because — whatever logic-level protocol support they might have mis-implemented — they're still "USB-standard devices" on the electrical-pinout level. Now, these are all fairly-old connectors I'm mentioning, so you'd think we'd have learned better by now; but special mention goes to the Atari joystick port (technically a type of D-sub connector), which is still to this day slapped onto arbitrary generic Shenzhen-special "TV plug-and-play consoles" — with no two devices being wired the same way, and so only actually supporting the gamepads the console comes with. When you think about it, relative to this disaster, USB-C does guarantee you that 1. plugging any two USB-C ports together with a USB-C cable won't throw your circuit breaker; and 2. as long as both devices are data devices, you'll get at least USB2 data-transfer out of the arrangement (if you're plugging in a legacy USB2 device), and much more likely USB3 speeds. Everything is actually compatible with everything, as long as you don't care about getting the fastest line-rates possible.
  • Gigachad 5y ago
    It seems we are pretty well settled on the fact that on a good laptop, all usb C ports should be capable of all features. And then on a hub, you can expect the usb-c port to be charging pass through and nothing more. All other ports on the hub work as you would expect. I wouldn't ever expect to see a hub where the usb-c ports pass on the full thunderbolt capabilities.
    • adhesive_wombat 5y ago
      > I wouldn't ever expect to see a hub where the usb-c ports pass on the full thunderbolt capabilities. Thunderbolt is specifically designed to permit daisy chaining (unlike USB). So it's actually quite normal for a device to pass Thunderbolt through to another, as well themselves being a Thunderbolt device.
• Spooky23 5y ago
  The problem is the cost of building a little hub that has a backplane capable of handling 40Gb is not cheap. Should alt mode work? Does anyone actually understand wtf that means? Combine that with the market expectation that a hub is a feature of a $12 keyboard and the baffling combination of cables, etc, and you get an expensive, limited utility product that will have low sales and high return rate. USB-C is a comically poorly designed human interface.
  • Dylan16807 5y ago
    I would expect a basic hub to do 5Gbps or 10Gbps. No need for 40. > USB-C is a comically poorly designed human interface. You can blame alt modes, but the port itself is fine and when used for pure USB the issues are quite minor.
• heleninboodler 5y ago
  Yeah, I just want the classic dumb USB Squid, but for USB-C. No power delivery, just a port multiplier. I did find one that was way too expensive that gives me 3 ports instead of 1.