8 ms·

>What we have now is so much better than what we used to have. Agree. People are looking at the past with rose tinted glasses or haven't lived through the '90s

>What we have now is so much better than what we used to have. Agree. People are looking at the past with rose tinted glasses or haven't lived through the '90s - '00 tech. Every phone and electronic gadget had their own proprietary dock, cable and connector for data and charging. Even many phones had proprietary connectors for headphones instead of the 3.5mm jack. It was a nightmare. You're phone is running out of battery while you're at the bar/on vacation? Then good luck finding someone with the same Motorola charger. Want to transfer your photos to your PC and your 50pin Sony Ericsson data cable is acting up? Good luck finding a cheap replacement on a short notice. Want to plug in the phone's memory card in your laptop instead? Well, if your laptop doesn't support Sony's proprietary Memory Stick Pro Duo, then you're shit out of luck. And even those proprietary connectors had plenty of issues, and manufacturers weren't even consistent, changing their connectors every few years instead of sticking with one for the long run. What we have today has certainly teething issues, but we're on the right path.

KronisLV 4y ago
> You're phone is running out of battery while you're at the bar/on vacation? Then good luck finding someone with the same Motorola charger. Curiously, many Nokia phones in the same generation seemed to use the same charger form factor, at least when I last checked. Contrast this to me recently finding myself with an Android phone that has USB Type C and only a Nintendo Switch charger. I mean, it looks like it fits and both of them are the same form factor, right? So technically it should charge the phone, too. Except that it didn't (personal experience) and some online claimed that certain phone and charger combinations might cause them to (temporarily) stop working. Ergo, instead of seeing that a Motorola charger won't work for my Nokia device, I was left wondering about whether it's even safe to share the charger given that the connectors do fit. Furthermore, I've seen cases where a USB cable actually doesn't carry data and can only be used for charging, with no clear/apparent indications of this, neither when buying it or when looking at it. The world would be much simpler if one plug had one spec, with no deviations from it being permissible. If it fits, it should work.
- ChuckNorris89 4y ago
  >If it fits, it should work. Except it does work, for charging at least. Everywhere I could find a type-C plug, it always managed to charge my phone regardless which charger brand or dock was at the other end. I can go to any bar, airport or hotel on any continent and I know I'll find a type-C plug somewhere VS in the past when your Cingular phone had a connector which wasn't available in Europe because those phones weren't sold there. That's a real life saver which many people seem to ignore just because their Nintendo widget decided to not follow the spec. >Contrast this to me recently finding myself with an Android phone that has USB Type C and only a Nintendo Switch charger Nintendo violated the spec on the Switch either through malice, wanting to lock users into their own chargers, or through engineering incompetence by not being able to follow a spec which every other electronics brand could. Nintendo is also known to be extremely anti-consumer. So blame Nintendo not type-C.
  - gumby 4y ago
    No downside I hadn’t expected is that because of all the extreme back compatibility you could have a TB4 drive and TB4 host but accidentally use a cable that only supports USB 1/2. It would work, just at very low speed, and an unsophisticated user would simply suffer, not knowing how to diagnose the problem.
    - gumby 4y ago
      “No downside” should be “A downside…”
  - jcelerier 4y ago
    > Everywhere I could find a type-C plug, it always managed to charge my phone regardless which charger brand or dock was at the other end. Here it definitely doesn't. I have at least 4/5 cables / usb-c ports combos in my home which aren't able to perform this apparently basic feature ; the phone's charging icon will activate but it will still loose battery
    - innocenat 4y ago
maccard 4y ago
> Agree. People are looking at the past with rose tinted glasses or haven't lived through the '90s - '00 tech. Every phone and electronic gadget had their own proprietary dock, cable and connector for data and charging. Even many phones had proprietary connectors for headphones instead of the 3.5mm jack. It was a nightmare. You've missed the problematic point of where we are now. In the mid 2010's, apple had lightning, and android was almost certainly micro USB. If I had a USB port, and a cable that fit, it would charge my phone effectively. Somewhere in the transition to USB-C ,we lost that. > What we have today has certainly teething issues, but we're on the right path. I disagree - we've missed the forest for the trees. I have 4 mains to USB adapters in my home, and 2 USB-A plug sockets. I also have 4 USB C-C cables, and 2 A-C cables (which stay in the wall sockets). I use these to power 2 phones, 2 pairs of earbuds, an M1 Macbook and and iPad. If you pick an arbitrary cable and an arbitrary power adapter and plug it into a device that fits, it will do anything ranging from not work at all (with my anker wall charger and any cable into both sets of earbuds), up to charging it so quickly the device oveheats (140w USB c charger into either phone). I've got 6 devices, 4 cables, and 4 plugs that all have the same connection points that just don't work properly together. Meanwhile if you go back to the mid 2010's as per earlier, we had a lightning cable and a micro USB cable - you knew it worked if it fit. That's before you get into the nonsense around Android auto. I have a car with AA in it's head unit, and a USB port for connectivity. I must ahve tried 5 different branded cables before I found a reddit post that linked a specific anker cable that works for my very specific combination of car and device - I _never_ would have figured that out on my own.
- ChuckNorris89 4y ago
  >You've missed the problematic point of where we are now. I don't think I missed anything on the phone charging part, I think you're looking at other issues. >If I had a USB port, and a cable that fit, it would charge my phone effectively. Somewhere in the transition to USB-C ,we lost that. I don't know what you think we lost, but every type-C plug I could find in any household or office, always managed to charge my Android phone, just like micro-B before that.
  - maccard 4y ago
cm2187 4y ago
And those humongous SCSI ports... https://anydifferencebetween.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Difference-Between-SCSI-Port-and-MIDI-Port.jpg https://anydifferencebetween.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/...
- mrexroad 4y ago
  And you remembered to terminate the SCSI on your scanner after you unhooked the printer, right?
jrockway 4y ago
Charging is one aspect. People are bricking their devices today because everyone loves the center-positive barrel connector. It's used for everything from 3.3V to 48V (and maybe even more than that). Plug your 5V device into a 12V supply, rest in peace, device. The shared form factor is nice, though, when you do carefully compare the voltage markings. I have a drawer of random 12V power supplies, and I have no idea if any of my devices are actually using the 12V power supply they came with, and it all works. Meanwhile, the varying form factor for computer parts has never really been a problem. Back in the day, nobody ever tried to connect their VGA monitor to their PS/2 mouse port. But now, thanks to USB-C, many people try that, only to have it fail. They might have to get a new computer or monitor to salvage even one of them, but in the past, it was pretty easy to get something to work. (Still not perfect, of course. You still had to have a graphics card that could drive the monitor at the timings you desired, and sometimes the optimal timings for the monitor weren't achievable with your particular video output. This problem, of course, still affects HDMI, DVI, DisplayPort, and Thunderbolt.) Meanwhile, the ports that were the same caused a lot of confusion. How come you couldn't connect your PS/2 keyboard to the mouse port? All in all, I think Type C is kryptonite for today's economy. Consumers only look at one spec when purchasing peripherals -- the price. To make the lowest price USB type C cable, you simply remove any copper from it that isn't related to charging a phone. That means you end up with people that want to use displayport alt mode, or data transfer, and can't, and have no ability whatsoever to fix the problem themselves. None of this precludes a standard that lets you charge your phone, but it's complicated when you want to use one port to charge your phone, your laptop, your desktop, your monitor, share data, stream video, etc. and USB didn't get this one right. Of course, the industry did even worse without a standard, but it's still terrible.
seanp2k2 4y ago
It’s funny that we went through that but now have 4 different EV plugs that are standard and widely deployed: - Tesla (AFAIK cannot be adapted to charge a SAE J1772 car) - SAE J1772 (what my car, a PHEV has) - CCS (I think this adaptable to J1772 but the chargers I’ve seen around the Bay Area are DC-only so these are useless even if mechanically adapted for my J1772 car) - CHAdeMO - DC Only If we keep going like this, with proprietary charging networks, incompatible plugs, and holiday weekends in California where the official guidance is to not charge your EV, it’s very difficult for me to be optimistic about the future of EVs. We probably need a trillion dollars worth of infra to fix the grid, chargers, and roads to really make this good, but I do not see that happening in my lifetime (mid 30s).
- saurik 4y ago
  FWIW with the Tesla charging stations, they've talked before about opening it up to other cars, and I can see that happening eventually. The problem right now is that, the existence of those proprietary charging locations is part of their competitive advantage. It sucks, and it would probably be better to live in a world where there were separate charging companies and car companies, but the investment in bothering to build out the charge network is coming from Tesla specifically because they want to get people to buy a fleet of cars, and that chicken-and-egg issue isn't sure to work out correctly if their investment were able to be quickly piggy-backed by other car manufacturers who waited until Tesla built out the high-capacity charging locations to bother putting out a car. When the Tesla charging network isn't so much of a competitive advantage, it will likely open up (per my earlier comment that they've actually mentioned this recently). None of this, of course, applies to laptop companies with their bullshit barrel chargers.

KronisLV 4y ago

> You're phone is running out of battery while you're at the bar/on vacation? Then good luck finding someone with the same Motorola charger. Curiously, many Nokia phones in the same generation seemed to use the same charger form factor, at least when I last checked. Contrast this to me recently finding myself with an Android phone that has USB Type C and only a Nintendo Switch charger. I mean, it looks like it fits and both of them are the same form factor, right? So technically it should charge the phone, too. Except that it didn't (personal experience) and some online claimed that certain phone and charger combinations might cause them to (temporarily) stop working. Ergo, instead of seeing that a Motorola charger won't work for my Nokia device, I was left wondering about whether it's even safe to share the charger given that the connectors do fit. Furthermore, I've seen cases where a USB cable actually doesn't carry data and can only be used for charging, with no clear/apparent indications of this, neither when buying it or when looking at it. The world would be much simpler if one plug had one spec, with no deviations from it being permissible. If it fits, it should work.

ChuckNorris89 4y ago
>If it fits, it should work. Except it does work, for charging at least. Everywhere I could find a type-C plug, it always managed to charge my phone regardless which charger brand or dock was at the other end. I can go to any bar, airport or hotel on any continent and I know I'll find a type-C plug somewhere VS in the past when your Cingular phone had a connector which wasn't available in Europe because those phones weren't sold there. That's a real life saver which many people seem to ignore just because their Nintendo widget decided to not follow the spec. >Contrast this to me recently finding myself with an Android phone that has USB Type C and only a Nintendo Switch charger Nintendo violated the spec on the Switch either through malice, wanting to lock users into their own chargers, or through engineering incompetence by not being able to follow a spec which every other electronics brand could. Nintendo is also known to be extremely anti-consumer. So blame Nintendo not type-C.
- gumby 4y ago
  No downside I hadn’t expected is that because of all the extreme back compatibility you could have a TB4 drive and TB4 host but accidentally use a cable that only supports USB 1/2. It would work, just at very low speed, and an unsophisticated user would simply suffer, not knowing how to diagnose the problem.
  - gumby 4y ago
    “No downside” should be “A downside…”
- jcelerier 4y ago
  > Everywhere I could find a type-C plug, it always managed to charge my phone regardless which charger brand or dock was at the other end. Here it definitely doesn't. I have at least 4/5 cables / usb-c ports combos in my home which aren't able to perform this apparently basic feature ; the phone's charging icon will activate but it will still loose battery
  - innocenat 4y ago

maccard 4y ago

> Agree. People are looking at the past with rose tinted glasses or haven't lived through the '90s - '00 tech. Every phone and electronic gadget had their own proprietary dock, cable and connector for data and charging. Even many phones had proprietary connectors for headphones instead of the 3.5mm jack. It was a nightmare. You've missed the problematic point of where we are now. In the mid 2010's, apple had lightning, and android was almost certainly micro USB. If I had a USB port, and a cable that fit, it would charge my phone effectively. Somewhere in the transition to USB-C ,we lost that. > What we have today has certainly teething issues, but we're on the right path. I disagree - we've missed the forest for the trees. I have 4 mains to USB adapters in my home, and 2 USB-A plug sockets. I also have 4 USB C-C cables, and 2 A-C cables (which stay in the wall sockets). I use these to power 2 phones, 2 pairs of earbuds, an M1 Macbook and and iPad. If you pick an arbitrary cable and an arbitrary power adapter and plug it into a device that fits, it will do anything ranging from not work at all (with my anker wall charger and any cable into both sets of earbuds), up to charging it so quickly the device oveheats (140w USB c charger into either phone). I've got 6 devices, 4 cables, and 4 plugs that all have the same connection points that just don't work properly together. Meanwhile if you go back to the mid 2010's as per earlier, we had a lightning cable and a micro USB cable - you knew it worked if it fit. That's before you get into the nonsense around Android auto. I have a car with AA in it's head unit, and a USB port for connectivity. I must ahve tried 5 different branded cables before I found a reddit post that linked a specific anker cable that works for my very specific combination of car and device - I _never_ would have figured that out on my own.

ChuckNorris89 4y ago
>You've missed the problematic point of where we are now. I don't think I missed anything on the phone charging part, I think you're looking at other issues. >If I had a USB port, and a cable that fit, it would charge my phone effectively. Somewhere in the transition to USB-C ,we lost that. I don't know what you think we lost, but every type-C plug I could find in any household or office, always managed to charge my Android phone, just like micro-B before that.
- maccard 4y ago

cm2187 4y ago

And those humongous SCSI ports... https://anydifferencebetween.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Difference-Between-SCSI-Port-and-MIDI-Port.jpg https://anydifferencebetween.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/...

mrexroad 4y ago
And you remembered to terminate the SCSI on your scanner after you unhooked the printer, right?

jrockway 4y ago

Charging is one aspect. People are bricking their devices today because everyone loves the center-positive barrel connector. It's used for everything from 3.3V to 48V (and maybe even more than that). Plug your 5V device into a 12V supply, rest in peace, device. The shared form factor is nice, though, when you do carefully compare the voltage markings. I have a drawer of random 12V power supplies, and I have no idea if any of my devices are actually using the 12V power supply they came with, and it all works. Meanwhile, the varying form factor for computer parts has never really been a problem. Back in the day, nobody ever tried to connect their VGA monitor to their PS/2 mouse port. But now, thanks to USB-C, many people try that, only to have it fail. They might have to get a new computer or monitor to salvage even one of them, but in the past, it was pretty easy to get something to work. (Still not perfect, of course. You still had to have a graphics card that could drive the monitor at the timings you desired, and sometimes the optimal timings for the monitor weren't achievable with your particular video output. This problem, of course, still affects HDMI, DVI, DisplayPort, and Thunderbolt.) Meanwhile, the ports that were the same caused a lot of confusion. How come you couldn't connect your PS/2 keyboard to the mouse port? All in all, I think Type C is kryptonite for today's economy. Consumers only look at one spec when purchasing peripherals -- the price. To make the lowest price USB type C cable, you simply remove any copper from it that isn't related to charging a phone. That means you end up with people that want to use displayport alt mode, or data transfer, and can't, and have no ability whatsoever to fix the problem themselves. None of this precludes a standard that lets you charge your phone, but it's complicated when you want to use one port to charge your phone, your laptop, your desktop, your monitor, share data, stream video, etc. and USB didn't get this one right. Of course, the industry did even worse without a standard, but it's still terrible.

seanp2k2 4y ago

It’s funny that we went through that but now have 4 different EV plugs that are standard and widely deployed: - Tesla (AFAIK cannot be adapted to charge a SAE J1772 car) - SAE J1772 (what my car, a PHEV has) - CCS (I think this adaptable to J1772 but the chargers I’ve seen around the Bay Area are DC-only so these are useless even if mechanically adapted for my J1772 car) - CHAdeMO - DC Only If we keep going like this, with proprietary charging networks, incompatible plugs, and holiday weekends in California where the official guidance is to not charge your EV, it’s very difficult for me to be optimistic about the future of EVs. We probably need a trillion dollars worth of infra to fix the grid, chargers, and roads to really make this good, but I do not see that happening in my lifetime (mid 30s).

saurik 4y ago
FWIW with the Tesla charging stations, they've talked before about opening it up to other cars, and I can see that happening eventually. The problem right now is that, the existence of those proprietary charging locations is part of their competitive advantage. It sucks, and it would probably be better to live in a world where there were separate charging companies and car companies, but the investment in bothering to build out the charge network is coming from Tesla specifically because they want to get people to buy a fleet of cars, and that chicken-and-egg issue isn't sure to work out correctly if their investment were able to be quickly piggy-backed by other car manufacturers who waited until Tesla built out the high-capacity charging locations to bother putting out a car. When the Tesla charging network isn't so much of a competitive advantage, it will likely open up (per my earlier comment that they've actually mentioned this recently). None of this, of course, applies to laptop companies with their bullshit barrel chargers.