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This will likely not happen. USB-IF is made up of manufacturers. The primary goal is lower BOM. The confusion is the point. Making everything optional is the p

This will likely not happen. USB-IF is made up of manufacturers. The primary goal is lower BOM. The confusion is the point. Making everything optional is the point. USB-IF is not going to adopt a standard that requires every manufacturer to retool or redesign their Widget in order to slap a USB 4 label on it. Why would they vote for that? The whole 2x2/Gen2/etc thing was so some of the members could do some minor revisions then keep shipping their existing chips and products without them being considered "old", with a bit of "design by committee" mixed in. USB-IF doesn't give two shits what you or I or anyone else thinks about it, nor what our actual experiences with it are. They care about how much it costs. And by cost I mean an $0.01 difference per unit is considered a significant savings.

dboreham 4y ago
That penny dropping moment when you realize your pain point is someone else's business model.
dataflow 4y ago
> And by cost I mean an $0.01 difference per unit is considered a significant savings. Could someone ELI5 this line of thinking? Exactly how is a $0.01 saving so consequential? Is a better-performing $9.99 cable too expensive for some people but a $9.98 cable within their budget somehow? Is each manufacturer manufacturing 100 million cables and saving $1M here? What is the logic?
- andrewstuart2 4y ago
  The cost of these cables is sub-dollar. Like probably less than $0.50. Let's say $0.50 for argument's sake. Bringing the cost down a penny means 2% more sellable product for the same input materials. And when the margins are in the $10 range, that's a huge amount of leverage. They're not passing the $0.01 savings along to their customers. Or even if they are (and say, charge you $0.01 less), it's still a huge differential after you consider the 20x margin. Quick math: Let's say 1 million cables at $0.50. That costs you $500k. If you get the cost down to $0.49, you just enabled another 20k cables to be manufactured, and another $200k in profit.
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  - midasuni 4y ago
    1 million for 500k and sold for 10m is a 9.5 million dollar profit 1 million for 490k and sold for 10 million is a 9.5 million profit. 10k is a rounding error.
    - andrewstuart2 4y ago
      That extra $200k you made by saving a cent literally bought you your next $4M profit if you reinvest it. Not a rounding error in any way when you're reinvesting at such a massive margin.
- AlotOfReading 4y ago
  There's two main groups of people. Cable manufacturers and device manufacturers. Cables are commodity and most of the value is consumed by retail. Manufacturers compete against each other by tiny optimizations and huge scale. Unless there's someone on the retail side who can actively sell more expensive cables despite consumers having very little ability to distinguish them, the factories will cost optimize to death and beyond. On the device side, the ability to get those few percent extra profitability is the difference between a failed product and a successful one to higher ups. If you give a TPM the option to choose between $0.05 off the BOM and theoretical improvement to reliability, they'll choose the former almost every time. I remember one product launch that turned into a disaster because it had been cost optimized so hard that the circuit would go slightly out of spec under physical strain and it turned into a yelling match over the few cents of additional plastic in the housing to mitigate the issue.
- babel_ 4y ago
  The $0.01 savings is for the maker, and not for the buyer. For a typical cable, it's probably around $0.30 to $0.50 to make, and they tend to sell between $5 and $15, depending on the spec. For simplicity's sake, we'll assume $0.50 cables that sell for $10. Now, if you save $0.01 in manufacturing, so the cost is now $0.49, and if you sell say 100k cables (feels like a believable amount) then you've saved a cool $1000 in making them. So your profits are $1000 larger now, and you can pat yourself on the back. Good job! The kicker then is how those profits can be used to make MORE cables. And $1000 of extra profits means $1000 of extra cables. Just over 2000 more, in fact, which you can also sell for $10 each. Those extra 2000 cables have now earned you a cool $20k of profit ALONE, from only $1000 saved dollars, which itself was from only a single saved cent! Amazing job! If you keep repeating this, you can probably start to see how this begins to run away: Even starting with only $1 to make $0.49 cables, you end up earning over $1M on your 19th batch, even if you were spending only 10% of your sales to make new batches of cables and pocketing the other 90%! You actually pocket $1.5M on that batch, and then only spend $167k on the next batch, which promises to earn you even more! Meanwhile, your competitor making $0.50 cables, starting with a similar $1 and 10% to new batches scheme, would only get to pocket $1.1M on their 19th batch! That $400k is a pretty tidy bonus you've earned. On your 20th batch, you're selling 80k cables, but your competitor can only afford to sell $60k. We've not even reached the 100k a batch mark, let alone a million cables, and you're already way ahead. And that's compound interest, folks! From $1, saving only a single cent, we can earn $400k more than we would have otherwise. Outstanding. EDIT: I took so long to write this that I see andrewstuart2 has summed up the first half of the story far more concisely than I. Nicely done! I feel that compound interest is important for seeing the bigger picture of profit over time, so I'll keep this comment as is.
  - patrec 4y ago
    These numbers make no sense to me. If you typically have 1900% gross profit margins on USB cables, why isn't everyone making USB cables?
    - ac29 4y ago
      Thats a 95% gross margin, and in reality the manufacturer is not going to be selling at retail prices. A lot of the available margin is going to go to the retailer.
- asdajksah2123 4y ago
  They add up. A penny here, a penny there, and soon you're talking something like $0.15/cable. If you sell a million cables, that's $150k. But there's also the fact that people usually buy stuff based on price. If you go on Amazon, as a consumer, you're likely to buy the $3.99 cable over the $4.99 cable. And with the profit margins necessary that $0.15 cost savings can easily translate to a $1-$1.50 price difference for the end consumer.
FinalBriefing 4y ago
Could an independent body create a spec that cables can be certified against? Like Apple's MFi Program? Seems like there is a market for cables that are easy to identify.
- gumby 4y ago
  You could just start making cables with these labels and see if they catch on.
donmcronald 4y ago
> USB-IF is made up of manufacturers. The primary goal is lower BOM. The confusion is the point. Making everything optional is the point. Yep. If you start looking at it from the point of view of who benefits and who makes the standards, it makes a lot more sense. The physical connector is terrible and ends up being the first thing to break on a lot of electronics. The labelling is confusing and no one knows what to buy, so you always end up buying more than you need. Motherboard manufacturers were happy to re-label their marketing materials on old boards to say USB 3.1 so they could sell them to unsuspecting consumers that were tricked into thinking 3.1 > 3.0. It goes on and on. Look at the big picture and it starts to feel like the goal is to create a bad design because it means the manufacturers can sell us more junk.
- Retric 4y ago
  Except I like many people gave up on USB because it’s a mess so I don’t care what standard is on the motherboard whatsoever. I am not buying USB devices require higher standards which means no selling replacement cables etc. Wireless charging or dedicated cables are just less painful than power over USB. The idea of running video signal over USB is just cringe inducing.
  - scarface74 4y ago
    How did many people “give up on USB” when that’s all that is available on PCs? Besides, wireless charging is much slower and video over wireless introduces lag.
    - gtirloni 4y ago
      I'm asking the same questions. There's no giving up on USB because there are no alternatives. Wireless charging is terrible and inefficient.
      - Retric 4y ago
        Wireless charging cellphones uses so little power that their ~70% efficiency is practically irrelevant. A single USB wall charger that wastes 0.5W when not in use consumes about 4x as much energy as is wasted by using wireless charging your cellphone. As to recharge speeds, it’s easily comparable with USB. Sometimes USB charging is noticeably faster, but use the wrong charger and USB will be far slower.
beltsazar 4y ago
> USB-IF is made up of manufacturers. The primary goal is lower BOM. The confusion is the point. Making everything optional is the point. That's an unfortunate truth and it happens to other standards as well, e.g. HDMI: > "Products can no longer get certified for 2.0 only for 2.1, and also 2.1 features are optional to implement, so popular features like 4k120, ALLM, VRR are not required," Brad Bramy, VP of marketing and operations for the HDMI LA, confirmed to Ars. "Manufacturers could only implement eARC, for example, and claim to be a 2.1-enabled device." https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/12/the-hdmi-forum-follows-the-usb-if-in-using-new-version-numbers-to-refer-to-old-ports/ https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/12/the-hdmi-forum-follo...
k_sze 4y ago
I wonder if we could have a government body step in on the grounds of hostility towards consumers. I imagine this might be something the EU could do.
- tinus_hn 4y ago
  Sorry, the EU is currently busy, they’re mandating the cables you oppose.
ngcc_hk 4y ago
Can we have consumer group or eu etc to specify those?
jbverschoor 4y ago
They should just require a banded strip of colors of about 0.5" / 1cm per colorband on both sides of the cable to indicate capabilities. Bother devices should then have the colors required IN the socket/connector.
- capableweb 4y ago
  Did you just ignore the entire point of parents comment? It's not a technical problem, is that the companies/people involved don't want to solve it, because it doesn't benefit them.
  - jbverschoor 4y ago
    They already put capabilities on the box. The problem is that it's not visible to the end user what is required. Simple color bands would help a lot. This problem can never be solved. Where there are improvements over the same connector, you need some way to identify. Either with a simple solution such as colors or markings, or with on-screen / audio feedback.
baybal2 4y ago

dboreham 4y ago

That penny dropping moment when you realize your pain point is someone else's business model.

dataflow 4y ago

> And by cost I mean an $0.01 difference per unit is considered a significant savings. Could someone ELI5 this line of thinking? Exactly how is a $0.01 saving so consequential? Is a better-performing $9.99 cable too expensive for some people but a $9.98 cable within their budget somehow? Is each manufacturer manufacturing 100 million cables and saving $1M here? What is the logic?

andrewstuart2 4y ago
The cost of these cables is sub-dollar. Like probably less than $0.50. Let's say $0.50 for argument's sake. Bringing the cost down a penny means 2% more sellable product for the same input materials. And when the margins are in the $10 range, that's a huge amount of leverage. They're not passing the $0.01 savings along to their customers. Or even if they are (and say, charge you $0.01 less), it's still a huge differential after you consider the 20x margin. Quick math: Let's say 1 million cables at $0.50. That costs you $500k. If you get the cost down to $0.49, you just enabled another 20k cables to be manufactured, and another $200k in profit.
- deleted 4y ago
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- deleted 4y ago
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- midasuni 4y ago
  1 million for 500k and sold for 10m is a 9.5 million dollar profit 1 million for 490k and sold for 10 million is a 9.5 million profit. 10k is a rounding error.
  - andrewstuart2 4y ago
    That extra $200k you made by saving a cent literally bought you your next $4M profit if you reinvest it. Not a rounding error in any way when you're reinvesting at such a massive margin.
AlotOfReading 4y ago
There's two main groups of people. Cable manufacturers and device manufacturers. Cables are commodity and most of the value is consumed by retail. Manufacturers compete against each other by tiny optimizations and huge scale. Unless there's someone on the retail side who can actively sell more expensive cables despite consumers having very little ability to distinguish them, the factories will cost optimize to death and beyond. On the device side, the ability to get those few percent extra profitability is the difference between a failed product and a successful one to higher ups. If you give a TPM the option to choose between $0.05 off the BOM and theoretical improvement to reliability, they'll choose the former almost every time. I remember one product launch that turned into a disaster because it had been cost optimized so hard that the circuit would go slightly out of spec under physical strain and it turned into a yelling match over the few cents of additional plastic in the housing to mitigate the issue.
babel_ 4y ago
The $0.01 savings is for the maker, and not for the buyer. For a typical cable, it's probably around $0.30 to $0.50 to make, and they tend to sell between $5 and $15, depending on the spec. For simplicity's sake, we'll assume $0.50 cables that sell for $10. Now, if you save $0.01 in manufacturing, so the cost is now $0.49, and if you sell say 100k cables (feels like a believable amount) then you've saved a cool $1000 in making them. So your profits are $1000 larger now, and you can pat yourself on the back. Good job! The kicker then is how those profits can be used to make MORE cables. And $1000 of extra profits means $1000 of extra cables. Just over 2000 more, in fact, which you can also sell for $10 each. Those extra 2000 cables have now earned you a cool $20k of profit ALONE, from only $1000 saved dollars, which itself was from only a single saved cent! Amazing job! If you keep repeating this, you can probably start to see how this begins to run away: Even starting with only $1 to make $0.49 cables, you end up earning over $1M on your 19th batch, even if you were spending only 10% of your sales to make new batches of cables and pocketing the other 90%! You actually pocket $1.5M on that batch, and then only spend $167k on the next batch, which promises to earn you even more! Meanwhile, your competitor making $0.50 cables, starting with a similar $1 and 10% to new batches scheme, would only get to pocket $1.1M on their 19th batch! That $400k is a pretty tidy bonus you've earned. On your 20th batch, you're selling 80k cables, but your competitor can only afford to sell $60k. We've not even reached the 100k a batch mark, let alone a million cables, and you're already way ahead. And that's compound interest, folks! From $1, saving only a single cent, we can earn $400k more than we would have otherwise. Outstanding. EDIT: I took so long to write this that I see andrewstuart2 has summed up the first half of the story far more concisely than I. Nicely done! I feel that compound interest is important for seeing the bigger picture of profit over time, so I'll keep this comment as is.
- patrec 4y ago
  These numbers make no sense to me. If you typically have 1900% gross profit margins on USB cables, why isn't everyone making USB cables?
  - ac29 4y ago
    Thats a 95% gross margin, and in reality the manufacturer is not going to be selling at retail prices. A lot of the available margin is going to go to the retailer.
asdajksah2123 4y ago
They add up. A penny here, a penny there, and soon you're talking something like $0.15/cable. If you sell a million cables, that's $150k. But there's also the fact that people usually buy stuff based on price. If you go on Amazon, as a consumer, you're likely to buy the $3.99 cable over the $4.99 cable. And with the profit margins necessary that $0.15 cost savings can easily translate to a $1-$1.50 price difference for the end consumer.

FinalBriefing 4y ago

Could an independent body create a spec that cables can be certified against? Like Apple's MFi Program? Seems like there is a market for cables that are easy to identify.

gumby 4y ago
You could just start making cables with these labels and see if they catch on.

donmcronald 4y ago

> USB-IF is made up of manufacturers. The primary goal is lower BOM. The confusion is the point. Making everything optional is the point. Yep. If you start looking at it from the point of view of who benefits and who makes the standards, it makes a lot more sense. The physical connector is terrible and ends up being the first thing to break on a lot of electronics. The labelling is confusing and no one knows what to buy, so you always end up buying more than you need. Motherboard manufacturers were happy to re-label their marketing materials on old boards to say USB 3.1 so they could sell them to unsuspecting consumers that were tricked into thinking 3.1 > 3.0. It goes on and on. Look at the big picture and it starts to feel like the goal is to create a bad design because it means the manufacturers can sell us more junk.

Retric 4y ago
Except I like many people gave up on USB because it’s a mess so I don’t care what standard is on the motherboard whatsoever. I am not buying USB devices require higher standards which means no selling replacement cables etc. Wireless charging or dedicated cables are just less painful than power over USB. The idea of running video signal over USB is just cringe inducing.
- scarface74 4y ago
  How did many people “give up on USB” when that’s all that is available on PCs? Besides, wireless charging is much slower and video over wireless introduces lag.
  - gtirloni 4y ago
    I'm asking the same questions. There's no giving up on USB because there are no alternatives. Wireless charging is terrible and inefficient.
    - Retric 4y ago
      Wireless charging cellphones uses so little power that their ~70% efficiency is practically irrelevant. A single USB wall charger that wastes 0.5W when not in use consumes about 4x as much energy as is wasted by using wireless charging your cellphone. As to recharge speeds, it’s easily comparable with USB. Sometimes USB charging is noticeably faster, but use the wrong charger and USB will be far slower.

beltsazar 4y ago

> USB-IF is made up of manufacturers. The primary goal is lower BOM. The confusion is the point. Making everything optional is the point. That's an unfortunate truth and it happens to other standards as well, e.g. HDMI: > "Products can no longer get certified for 2.0 only for 2.1, and also 2.1 features are optional to implement, so popular features like 4k120, ALLM, VRR are not required," Brad Bramy, VP of marketing and operations for the HDMI LA, confirmed to Ars. "Manufacturers could only implement eARC, for example, and claim to be a 2.1-enabled device." https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/12/the-hdmi-forum-follows-the-usb-if-in-using-new-version-numbers-to-refer-to-old-ports/ https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/12/the-hdmi-forum-follo...

k_sze 4y ago

I wonder if we could have a government body step in on the grounds of hostility towards consumers. I imagine this might be something the EU could do.

tinus_hn 4y ago
Sorry, the EU is currently busy, they’re mandating the cables you oppose.

ngcc_hk 4y ago

Can we have consumer group or eu etc to specify those?

jbverschoor 4y ago

They should just require a banded strip of colors of about 0.5" / 1cm per colorband on both sides of the cable to indicate capabilities. Bother devices should then have the colors required IN the socket/connector.

capableweb 4y ago
Did you just ignore the entire point of parents comment? It's not a technical problem, is that the companies/people involved don't want to solve it, because it doesn't benefit them.
- jbverschoor 4y ago
  They already put capabilities on the box. The problem is that it's not visible to the end user what is required. Simple color bands would help a lot. This problem can never be solved. Where there are improvements over the same connector, you need some way to identify. Either with a simple solution such as colors or markings, or with on-screen / audio feedback.

baybal2 4y ago