3 ms·
A big part of this is that a lot of manufacturers are just completely ignoring the standards. The standards specify a rather limited set of cables, and it spec
by crote 3y ago
A big part of this is that a lot of manufacturers are just completely ignoring the standards.
The standards specify a rather limited set of cables, and it specifies clear ways to label them which make it extremely obvious to consumers what the cable is capable of. But manufacturers just... can't be bothered to actually follow the standard.
The main reason why there isn't one cable is that it has mutually-incompatible goals. A high-speed data cable needs expensive, thick, shielded data wires - and is limited to about 80 cm in length due to signal integrity issues. All completely fine for connecting a laptop to a docking station.
On the other hand, a smartphone charging cable needs to be cheap, long, and flexible - but it doesn't need to carry high-speed data. The aforementioned docking station cable would technically work, but it'd be $30 rather than $3 and provide a far worse user experience.
- davegirdy2 3y ago[flagged]
- ThatPlayer 3y ago>it'd be $30 rather than $3 I think this is the big one. Having only fast cables is already possible. Just toss out all your unknown and slower USB-C cables, and buy a bunch of known good 30$ Thunderbolt 4 cables to replace them all. You don't need to force manufacturers to do anything. But I'm sure the majority of users don't care about USB 4 or Thunderbolt on all their cables. They've probably never used USB-C for mass data transfers, it's a charging cable, or maybe a USB 2.0 data rate devices like a Playstation controller or a headphones adapter now that 3.5mm jack is dead. Even most of the enthusiasts here probably don't care about spending an extra 5$ to upgrade their keyboard's USB-C cable to USB 3. It's just a waste of money.