6 ms·

Hands-on with the USB Type-C plug

74 points by mmastrac 12y ago

mmastrac 12y ago
One of the other cool features of USB C is "alternate modes", where two sides can negotiate a handoff of some of the lanes to things like DisplayPort: http://www.anandtech.com/show/8558/displayport-alternate-mode-for-usb-typec-announced http://www.anandtech.com/show/8558/displayport-alternate-mod...
- xorcist 12y ago
  I did not know that. This is seriously cool. Power, data, and video over that one cable. It's going to enable one universal way to dock your laptop, directly into your screen. It's what Thunderbolt could have been, if it was cheaper and could carry power.
  - femto 12y ago
    The one thing lacking is the ability to distribute precise timing, to the order of nanoseconds. It would be ultimately cool if it was possible to synchronise USB peripherals to this sort of accuracy. "USB-inSync" was an attempt to do this, but it wasn't part of the standard and Chronologic, it's distributor, seems to be defunct.
  - 7952 12y ago
    All I really want is an analog audio lane for audio to replace 3.5mm jacks.
    - xorcist 12y ago
      Why analog? There is audio in the Displayport stream, and there is no reason your screen couldn't hook up a USB DAC as well. Your headphones could go right into your screen, if that's what you want to accomplish.
bborud 12y ago
Did they purposefully go out of their way not to copy the Apple Lightning connector? Because this design is just stupid.
- eksith 12y ago
  Patents etc... They may have other reasons as well, like price of replacing a plug/wire vs. damaged socket. I've broken many a plug by pulling on the wire at an angle due to laziness, but luckily, nothing in the port broke.
- makomk 12y ago
  Apple's Lightning connector isn't capable of most of the things that USB C does. It doesn't support anything faster than USB 2, doesn't even have enough pins to support USB 3 or DisplayPort let alone both at the same time, can only deliver a fraction of the power, etcera. In some ways it was actually less capable than Apple's old 30-pin dock connector.
- yincrash 12y ago
  What's stupid about it, exactly?
cantrevealname 12y ago
USB started out as a nice clean interface at least far as the cabling was concerned. Originally it had just two kinds of plugs ("A" and "B"). But the number of USB connector types is getting out of control. I'm sure there are good technical reasons as to why they couldn't re-use the same connectors for higher-speeds and greater power, but in some cases the changes do seem gratuitous. For example, introducing a mini-USB connector and then micro-USB seems to have been poorly planned. The connectors are similar-looking and so close in size that it causes endless confusion. I don't understand why they couldn't have standardized on either the mini or the micro instead of having both.
- JoshTriplett 12y ago
  USB type C is actually an effort to fix that across the board: the cable can be symmetric (C on both ends), all type C ports have the equivalent of on-the-go support, it's as small as micro-B so thin devices can use it, and it supports fast charging with enough power for a laptop. Hopefully, new devices will have only USB type C ports and nothing else.
  - tantalor 12y ago
    http://xkcd.com/927/ http://xkcd.com/927/
    - bronson 12y ago
      Downvoted because enough is enough! The "14 competing standards" comic was really funny the first few hundred times it was snarked into HN comments.
      - nobrains 12y ago
        But this time it fits perfectly.
        bronson 12y ago
        No, to fit perfectly, the type C plug would have been invented to cover the use cases of all of the the previous plugs. That was not the motivation.
pistle 12y ago
Where's the mini-C and micro-C? throws away a pile of USB cables Are small-run PCB fabs ready to punch all those mid-mount cutouts? I'm scratching my head about the mid-mount.
- JoshTriplett 12y ago
  > Where's the mini-C and micro-C? Eternally non-existent, since C is the size of micro-B, small enough for ridiculously thin phones and tablets.
- drone 12y ago
  Routing in PCBs isn't as big of a deal as it used to be. In fact, at this point, we're routing tabs and such wherever its appropriate to avoid the need to to lay out multi-job panels to allow for v-scoring. Mid-mount USB connectors have been getting a lot more popular lately for smaller packages.
computator 12y ago
Somewhat meta to the article, but isn't it interesting that there is only one English word for a male connector (i.e., plug), but numerous names for a female connector (jack, receptacle, outlet, socket, slot).
- w-ll 12y ago
  I generally refer to the two ends as male and female respectively.
- moreati 12y ago
  I consider jack to refer to the male connector, e.g. 3.5 mm jack means the plug on a pair of headphones. Interesting that it's not universal.
  - riffraff 12y ago
    same here (european, non english country, if that matters)
  - smorrow 12y ago
    And so you should, because that's what it originally referred to: jack is short for jackknife.
drcode 12y ago
I'm not an expert on creating reliable electronics, but the new iOS connector is just a "tongue", whereas this new type-c connector is a "hole" that accepts a "tongue", and the plug the type-c connector fits in is a "tongue" that accepts a "hole" that contains a "tongue" (sorry for the simplistic terminology) Surely, this is going lead to a whole new generation of loose, flaky cable connections, just as with the previous USB connectors (and unlike the new iOS connectors, which never seem to lead to loose connections)
- azernik 12y ago
  Doesn't seem so. Looking at the pictures, the design seems to consist of a receptable which looks like a Lightning connector with a piece of shielding around it, and a plug which looks like a Lightning receptable. If anything, it's mechanically close to Lightning than to the current USB connector, so there's no reason to assume that it will have bad connection.
- Igglyboo 12y ago
  FYI: The correct terminology for "tongue" would be male and "hole" is female.
  - gatehouse 12y ago
    I'm not sure this is what parent^ is referring to. The "male" USB is box-shaped, and the "female" USB has the interior protrusion (with the pins on it) and then the larger slot. The apple lightning cable is just a tab that goes in a hole. Similar to a barrel power connector versus a headphone plug.
    - Igglyboo 12y ago
      Yea but the male usb still goes inside the female. It's really crude but the designations are supposed to mirror human reproductive organs, male goes inside of female.
- i_am_ralpht 12y ago
  Anecdotally, the Lightning cable seems to be a bit flaky itself, getting 1.5 stars from 1646 reviews on Apple's store: http://store.apple.com/us/product/MD818ZM/A/lightning-to-usb-cable http://store.apple.com/us/product/MD818ZM/A/lightning-to-usb... Hopefully Type C will be better than Micro-B and Lightning. Also, Type C can deliver 100W of power, which I'm not sure Lightning could do...
bluthru 12y ago
Why didn't they just copy Apple's Lightning design?
- Sanddancer 12y ago
  There are enough similarities in purpose, and enough differences in functionality -- USB C has an additional differential signal pair, etc -- that having the designs be similar would only cause confusion. Additionally, Lightning's patented, so making things close in design would require paying royalties to Apple.
  - bborud 12y ago
    Fantastic. Because making a flat bit of plastic and metal that goes into another bit of plastic and metal constitutes "intellectual property", the world will be stuck with a crap design for another 10-20 years. This is the sort of stuff that ensures eventual aliens will say "let's not go to earth for it is a silly place".
dgreensp 12y ago
Very, very cool!
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
sauere 12y ago
I could care less that it is now reversible. Yes it was annoying, but having to keep 4++ different cable types, adapters and all is just as annoying. What bothers me more is the durability of the pins. The contact surface wears out rather quickly, especially on the now prominent micro-USB connectors, leading to unstable, shaky connections.
- lmm 12y ago
  One of the design points of micro-USB was to put the moving parts in the cable, so it should be the cable that wears out rather than the device connector, and those are cheap to replace.

74 points by mmastrac 12y ago

One of the other cool features of USB C is "alternate modes", where two sides can negotiate a handoff of some of the lanes to things like DisplayPort: http://www.anandtech.com/show/8558/displayport-alternate-mode-for-usb-typec-announced http://www.anandtech.com/show/8558/displayport-alternate-mod...

xorcist 12y ago
I did not know that. This is seriously cool. Power, data, and video over that one cable. It's going to enable one universal way to dock your laptop, directly into your screen. It's what Thunderbolt could have been, if it was cheaper and could carry power.
- femto 12y ago
  The one thing lacking is the ability to distribute precise timing, to the order of nanoseconds. It would be ultimately cool if it was possible to synchronise USB peripherals to this sort of accuracy. "USB-inSync" was an attempt to do this, but it wasn't part of the standard and Chronologic, it's distributor, seems to be defunct.
- 7952 12y ago
  All I really want is an analog audio lane for audio to replace 3.5mm jacks.
  - xorcist 12y ago
    Why analog? There is audio in the Displayport stream, and there is no reason your screen couldn't hook up a USB DAC as well. Your headphones could go right into your screen, if that's what you want to accomplish.

bborud 12y ago

Did they purposefully go out of their way not to copy the Apple Lightning connector? Because this design is just stupid.

eksith 12y ago
Patents etc... They may have other reasons as well, like price of replacing a plug/wire vs. damaged socket. I've broken many a plug by pulling on the wire at an angle due to laziness, but luckily, nothing in the port broke.
makomk 12y ago
Apple's Lightning connector isn't capable of most of the things that USB C does. It doesn't support anything faster than USB 2, doesn't even have enough pins to support USB 3 or DisplayPort let alone both at the same time, can only deliver a fraction of the power, etcera. In some ways it was actually less capable than Apple's old 30-pin dock connector.
yincrash 12y ago
What's stupid about it, exactly?

cantrevealname 12y ago

USB started out as a nice clean interface at least far as the cabling was concerned. Originally it had just two kinds of plugs ("A" and "B"). But the number of USB connector types is getting out of control. I'm sure there are good technical reasons as to why they couldn't re-use the same connectors for higher-speeds and greater power, but in some cases the changes do seem gratuitous. For example, introducing a mini-USB connector and then micro-USB seems to have been poorly planned. The connectors are similar-looking and so close in size that it causes endless confusion. I don't understand why they couldn't have standardized on either the mini or the micro instead of having both.

JoshTriplett 12y ago
USB type C is actually an effort to fix that across the board: the cable can be symmetric (C on both ends), all type C ports have the equivalent of on-the-go support, it's as small as micro-B so thin devices can use it, and it supports fast charging with enough power for a laptop. Hopefully, new devices will have only USB type C ports and nothing else.
- tantalor 12y ago
  http://xkcd.com/927/ http://xkcd.com/927/
  - bronson 12y ago
    Downvoted because enough is enough! The "14 competing standards" comic was really funny the first few hundred times it was snarked into HN comments.
    - nobrains 12y ago
      But this time it fits perfectly.
      - bronson 12y ago
        No, to fit perfectly, the type C plug would have been invented to cover the use cases of all of the the previous plugs. That was not the motivation.

pistle 12y ago

Where's the mini-C and micro-C? throws away a pile of USB cables Are small-run PCB fabs ready to punch all those mid-mount cutouts? I'm scratching my head about the mid-mount.

JoshTriplett 12y ago
> Where's the mini-C and micro-C? Eternally non-existent, since C is the size of micro-B, small enough for ridiculously thin phones and tablets.
drone 12y ago
Routing in PCBs isn't as big of a deal as it used to be. In fact, at this point, we're routing tabs and such wherever its appropriate to avoid the need to to lay out multi-job panels to allow for v-scoring. Mid-mount USB connectors have been getting a lot more popular lately for smaller packages.

computator 12y ago

Somewhat meta to the article, but isn't it interesting that there is only one English word for a male connector (i.e., plug), but numerous names for a female connector (jack, receptacle, outlet, socket, slot).

w-ll 12y ago
I generally refer to the two ends as male and female respectively.
moreati 12y ago
I consider jack to refer to the male connector, e.g. 3.5 mm jack means the plug on a pair of headphones. Interesting that it's not universal.
- riffraff 12y ago
  same here (european, non english country, if that matters)
- smorrow 12y ago
  And so you should, because that's what it originally referred to: jack is short for jackknife.

drcode 12y ago

I'm not an expert on creating reliable electronics, but the new iOS connector is just a "tongue", whereas this new type-c connector is a "hole" that accepts a "tongue", and the plug the type-c connector fits in is a "tongue" that accepts a "hole" that contains a "tongue" (sorry for the simplistic terminology) Surely, this is going lead to a whole new generation of loose, flaky cable connections, just as with the previous USB connectors (and unlike the new iOS connectors, which never seem to lead to loose connections)

azernik 12y ago
Doesn't seem so. Looking at the pictures, the design seems to consist of a receptable which looks like a Lightning connector with a piece of shielding around it, and a plug which looks like a Lightning receptable. If anything, it's mechanically close to Lightning than to the current USB connector, so there's no reason to assume that it will have bad connection.
Igglyboo 12y ago
FYI: The correct terminology for "tongue" would be male and "hole" is female.
- gatehouse 12y ago
  I'm not sure this is what parent^ is referring to. The "male" USB is box-shaped, and the "female" USB has the interior protrusion (with the pins on it) and then the larger slot. The apple lightning cable is just a tab that goes in a hole. Similar to a barrel power connector versus a headphone plug.
  - Igglyboo 12y ago
    Yea but the male usb still goes inside the female. It's really crude but the designations are supposed to mirror human reproductive organs, male goes inside of female.
i_am_ralpht 12y ago
Anecdotally, the Lightning cable seems to be a bit flaky itself, getting 1.5 stars from 1646 reviews on Apple's store: http://store.apple.com/us/product/MD818ZM/A/lightning-to-usb-cable http://store.apple.com/us/product/MD818ZM/A/lightning-to-usb... Hopefully Type C will be better than Micro-B and Lightning. Also, Type C can deliver 100W of power, which I'm not sure Lightning could do...

bluthru 12y ago

Why didn't they just copy Apple's Lightning design?

Sanddancer 12y ago
There are enough similarities in purpose, and enough differences in functionality -- USB C has an additional differential signal pair, etc -- that having the designs be similar would only cause confusion. Additionally, Lightning's patented, so making things close in design would require paying royalties to Apple.
- bborud 12y ago
  Fantastic. Because making a flat bit of plastic and metal that goes into another bit of plastic and metal constitutes "intellectual property", the world will be stuck with a crap design for another 10-20 years. This is the sort of stuff that ensures eventual aliens will say "let's not go to earth for it is a silly place".

dgreensp 12y ago

Very, very cool!

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

sauere 12y ago

I could care less that it is now reversible. Yes it was annoying, but having to keep 4++ different cable types, adapters and all is just as annoying. What bothers me more is the durability of the pins. The contact surface wears out rather quickly, especially on the now prominent micro-USB connectors, leading to unstable, shaky connections.

lmm 12y ago
One of the design points of micro-USB was to put the moving parts in the cable, so it should be the cable that wears out rather than the device connector, and those are cheap to replace.