USB-C was supposed to simplify our lives, but instead it’s a total mess • Hacker News Board

Re: USB-C was supposed to simplify our lives, but instead it’s a total mess

#81

Post by falcolas » Thu, Oct 01, 2020, 2:20 PM UTC

jeremymcanally wrote: post #4

Really? I find it to be a game changer for me. The fact that my laptop, Switch, iPad, and several other devices can all share a charge has made my life much easier. I can just sprinkle a few of them throughout the house and never be without power. Before it was always a hunt to find a cable, or I had to be in [x] room to charge [y] device because that's where the charger lived. Plus, I can charge my MacBook on either…

> Plus, I can charge my MacBook on either side, so that's basically life changing on its own.

Yeah, be careful with that - for some MacBook Pro models charging from the left side will cause overheating and CPU throttling issues.

Re: USB-C was supposed to simplify our lives, but instead it’s a total mess

#82

Post by dcchambers » Thu, Oct 01, 2020, 2:20 PM UTC

USB-C is mostly a mess if you try to get away using the cheapest adapters/cables you can find, that often times won't follow the spec. Most of the issues vanish if you use high-end cables/adapters from reputable manufacturers. This is a departure from the world of Micro USB where most cheap cables worked just as good as "high end" cables.

There are caveats. For example, my Nintendo Switch, a major electronics device from a major company, doesn't fully comply with the full USB-C PD spec. As a result, you can't assume any power adapter will work.

It's these caveats that are the real downfall... for those of us in the technology world, it's easy for us to be aware of them. For everyone else, it's not. There's also the whole Thunderbolt 3 & 4 using USB-C thing. I do feel bad for non-technology people trying to wrap their heads around this one.

In general, I've had good luck with USB-C. I can power my laptop and display to a 4K monitor with a single cable. It's awesome. I've also had plenty of frustrating experiences and weird USB bugs with certain hardware combinations.

Despite some of the issues, I think it's still a net positive.

Re: USB-C was supposed to simplify our lives, but instead it’s a total mess

#83

Post by jeremymcanally » Thu, Oct 01, 2020, 2:21 PM UTC

vr46 wrote: post #23

jeremymcanally wrote: post #4

Really? I find it to be a game changer for me. The fact that my laptop, Switch, iPad, and several other devices can all share a charge has made my life much easier. I can just sprinkle a few of them throughout the house and never be without power. Before it was always a hunt to find a cable, or I had to be in [x] room to charge [y] device because that's where the charger lived. Plus, I can charge my MacBook on either…

Aha - you may find that your Switch CANNOT in fact share a charge - Nintendo's port is not necessarily safe to use with anything but its supplied charger. And I've just learned this lesson with a $60 bill from Nintendo repair after the port went pop and couldn't charge the device. I only have reputable chargers in the house from Apple and one from Anker aside from the Nintendo's own. All my apple kit works fine off t…

I use it with my Apple charger without issue, and I've done that since I got it quite a while ago. While I don't doubt your experience, it sounds like perhaps your situation isn't quite universal. Defective Switch hardware maybe? Not sure, but it works well for me.

Re: USB-C was supposed to simplify our lives, but instead it’s a total mess

#84

Post by pen2l » Thu, Oct 01, 2020, 2:21 PM UTC

ahmedalsudani wrote: post #56

izacus wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Aha - you may find that your Switch CANNOT in fact share a charge - Nintendo's port is not necessarily safe to use with anything but its supplied charger. And I've just learned this lesson with a $60 bill from Nintendo repair after the port went pop and couldn't charge the device. I only have reputable chargers in the house from Apple and one from Anker aside from the Nintendo's own. It has worked reliably with pre…

> And I've just learned this lesson with a $60 bill from Nintendo repair after the port went pop and couldn't charge the device. GP is giving you their first-hand experience with this issue. It’s a little disrespectful to call it an urban myth replying to a first-hand account. FWIW, the Switch charger outputs a higher voltage, IIRC.

Don’t think it’s necessarily « disrespectful « to doubt another’s account. This reminds me of the « bend gate » problem with iPhones. There were some here who reported the problem... but somehow it was not a problem in the grand scheme of things. We have a lot of skeptical folks here (a good thing!) so we should be respectfully skeptical of the skeptics at times, without an exchange of ill feelings. :)

Re: USB-C was supposed to simplify our lives, but instead it’s a total mess

#85

Post by zenexer » Thu, Oct 01, 2020, 2:21 PM UTC

reader_mode wrote: post #72

philplckthun wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's fine to point out the Thunderbolt mess, or the PD vs non-PD devices (although non-PD is becoming exceedingly rare as far as I can tell at least for "larger" devices), but using the Nintendo Switch seems like a bad example in my opinion, since it explicitly does not follow all USB standards, especially in fact on charging.

Why ? You have the same plug but it's not actually compatible - this to me is a good example of confusion - I would be the first to assume you can charge it with whatever USB-C power cable available and not bother checking the docs.

It seems like a deliberate effort on Nintendo's part to cause chaos. They could've done the same thing with any other standard, including micro USB. They made it just different enough that it's dangerous to use third-party peripherals.

Re: USB-C was supposed to simplify our lives, but instead it’s a total mess

#86

Post by arkitaip » Thu, Oct 01, 2020, 2:21 PM UTC

martin_a wrote: post #44

amelius wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just wait until you have to write an embedded driver for it.

Ah yeah, who doesn't do this everyday? I've written like... five of these today alone... Honestly, you'll find those "for me it's SUPER stressful"-cases everywhere, but it will not touch 99.99% of the other people.

Bah, in my days we wrote a dozen of drivers per day and that's only because we had to fight the network admins in hand to hand combat during the afternoon....

Re: USB-C was supposed to simplify our lives, but instead it’s a total mess

#87

Post by maccard » Thu, Oct 01, 2020, 2:21 PM UTC

izacus wrote: post #34

vr46 wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Aha - you may find that your Switch CANNOT in fact share a charge - Nintendo's port is not necessarily safe to use with anything but its supplied charger. And I've just learned this lesson with a $60 bill from Nintendo repair after the port went pop and couldn't charge the device. I only have reputable chargers in the house from Apple and one from Anker aside from the Nintendo's own. All my apple kit works fine off t…

> Aha - you may find that your Switch CANNOT in fact share a charge - Nintendo's port is not necessarily safe to use with anything but its supplied charger. And I've just learned this lesson with a $60 bill from Nintendo repair after the port went pop and couldn't charge the device. I only have reputable chargers in the house from Apple and one from Anker aside from the Nintendo's own. It has worked reliably with pre…

Another vote for the switch being evil here - just because it works for you doesn't mean it's an urban myth. The OnePlus adapters have historically had issues with the switch - https://www.reddit.com/r/oneplus/comments/5xexiz/fyi_the_one... and the iPhone usb adapters have also had issues.

The fact that there's a wiki on "what usb c charger to buy" for your switch suggest many others are having issues too - https://www.reddit.com/r/NintendoSwitch/comments/6jnkl4/list...

Re: USB-C was supposed to simplify our lives, but instead it’s a total mess

#88

Post by city41 » Thu, Oct 01, 2020, 2:21 PM UTC

syshum wrote: post #59

city41 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I could see it being great if all your devices are on it. But when you have usb-c, usb micro, usb mini and usb-b devices, the cables are a total pain. On top of the special pain usb-c brings onto itself. I have a cabinet that is basically dedicated to usb cables, using organizers to keep them all accessible and searchable. That does help a lot. But I feel like having to go that far is a sign usb was not as well thoug…

Well that just means you are not replacing all your devices every 12 months like the manufacturers want....

Heh :) a lot of current devices I buy still use usb micro. I'm mostly dealing with modern fpga recreations of old game consoles like analogue.co's products. Maybe usb-c has some kind of licensing cost that makes it prohibitive for smaller companies?

Re: USB-C was supposed to simplify our lives, but instead it’s a total mess

#89

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Oct 01, 2020, 2:21 PM UTC

jeremymcanally wrote: post #4

Really? I find it to be a game changer for me. The fact that my laptop, Switch, iPad, and several other devices can all share a charge has made my life much easier. I can just sprinkle a few of them throughout the house and never be without power. Before it was always a hunt to find a cable, or I had to be in [x] room to charge [y] device because that's where the charger lived. Plus, I can charge my MacBook on either…

[deleted]

Re: USB-C was supposed to simplify our lives, but instead it’s a total mess

#90

Post by remote_phone » Thu, Oct 01, 2020, 2:22 PM UTC

My friend and I ran into this mess over the last few weeks.

I’m trying to find a longer cable for my MacBook. Right now the 2m cable that came with it is too short. So I started looking. I couldn’t find one that was at least 3m long from Apple and I couldn’t understand why. I had to look on Amazon and only these cheaper manufacturers made them. Except they are fully USB C, they are USB C 2.0 to USB C 3.0 or some nonsense like this. My friend went ahead and bought that and then it turned out that cable didn’t work for one of his laptops.

Then he also wanted a USB C cable for his new external hard drive but in order to support it, it has a max length of 1m. If he chose a cable longer than that it would silently be slower.

I previously ran into this issue last year with a usb c to usb 2 cable I had. It wouldn’t charge my Switch properly and I didn’t understand why until I read up on how the Switch needed a certain type of USB C cable and the cheaper cables weren’t compatible.

The entire thing is a mess. There are some advantages definitely. My family has different laptops but they all support usb c, so now we only need to bring 1 charger on trips (when we eventually get to go on trips). The USB charger will also charge the Switch. That is a huge convenience. If you have top notch charger like the MacBook charger and top notch cables then it will probably work. But the operative word is “probably” and when it does it’s a huge hassle.