221–230 of 498 posts
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Your Thunderbolt cables don't have the lightening bolt logo on them? I didn't think it was a 'requirement' but every TB cable I've seen always has the thunderbolt icon.
Not my apple one.
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I wonder if the the committee have looked at integrating colour or some other indicator into the standard so that cable/port capabilities are clear visually. Though ofc the design challenge is for users to feel comfortable that putting red into blue won't break anything, it just might not give the expected features.
Or! We could go one step further, and change the connector to make sure that people use them correctly. Wouldn't that be clever!?
In particular, if my Thunderbolt ports didn't support bog-standard USB, that would suck. I would need special ports which weren't as powerful, or even more dongles, or both.
As it stands, things are.. fine, actually. I have one TB cable that works on everything, and a small handful of USB-C cables which work on most things. and a USB-C-or-Thunderbolt-and-I-don't-know-or-care to DisplayPort which stays plugged into my monitor. and a USB-C-or-Thunderbolt-etc to microHDMI for my camera.
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For most users the M1 is fast enough that a nicer user experience (no fan noise) is more worthwhile than slightly better performance. My friend recently purchased a MacBook Air with M1. There's no fan at all. It's incredible. It's a block of metal that just works.
For 20 years (ok, more, really), laptops have not been fast enough to do reasonable professional-grade photo editing using standard Adobe tools. The complexity of the algorithms being applied increases at least as fast as the processor power. So, put me down on the side of wishing they'd build a SKU that could be optimized for performance, rather than only power consumption. (Sometimes a desktop is not practical, lik…
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Indicator recommendations are routinely ignored. There are already color codes for type-A ports, and there's the "lightning bolt" indicator for Thunderbolt USB-C ports, but PC manufacturers ignore them when they want their laptops to have a certain look and feel (e.g. gaming laptops want red or green everything, Apple wants aluminum everything, etc.). Cable manufacturers are going to do whatever is cheapest.
Since the design philosophy behind USB-C is "it must always seem as though it should work", I think we'll need something like the old "tube testers" a few of us still remember. Decades ago, when your TV was behaving badly, you would take the back off (unplug first!), pull the vacuum tubes out, and take them in a bag to the nearest convenience store. They had a "tube tester" the size of a washing machine. You'd plug e…
I've been having to implement tons of my own testing because no cable ever works the way you think it will. I've got a giant pile of thick super beefy USB-C cables which only transmit data at USB 2.0 speeds. Which per the USB standards committee is apparently Working As Intended, but that is definitely not ok.
Because according to the comments here this won't work, will cause frequent fires and is an all around insane and unworkable idea.
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I wonder if the the committee have looked at integrating colour or some other indicator into the standard so that cable/port capabilities are clear visually. Though ofc the design challenge is for users to feel comfortable that putting red into blue won't break anything, it just might not give the expected features.
Or! We could go one step further, and change the connector to make sure that people use them correctly. Wouldn't that be clever!?
You'd need a cross product of different cable shapes for all the different available features, since the cable could support any number of them.
On top of that, the connector has mechanical constraints to handle, and some of these connector shapes will be suboptimal and undertested
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People already incorrectly buy USB A when they should have bought USB C or visa versa. Changing the physical form-factor doesn't solve this problem. "I thought I needed a USB cable"? Also it's a huge waste if say an HDMI 2.1 cable cannot be used on an HDMI 2.0/1.4 device. People would complain about that too.
> People already incorrectly buy USB A when they should have bought USB C or visa versa. Changing the physical form-factor doesn't solve this problem. At least the nature of the problem is immediately apparent to such people the moment they attempt to plug the cable in. If the cable won't fit, they know there is nothing wrong with their computer; they didn't misconfigure anything or click the wrong button. The proble…
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People already incorrectly buy USB A when they should have bought USB C or visa versa. Changing the physical form-factor doesn't solve this problem. "I thought I needed a USB cable"? Also it's a huge waste if say an HDMI 2.1 cable cannot be used on an HDMI 2.0/1.4 device. People would complain about that too.
> People already incorrectly buy USB A when they should have bought USB C or visa versa. Changing the physical form-factor doesn't solve this problem. At least the nature of the problem is immediately apparent to such people the moment they attempt to plug the cable in. If the cable won't fit, they know there is nothing wrong with their computer; they didn't misconfigure anything or click the wrong button. The proble…
You'll get people complaining about the cable not working with their new device, and then people complaining it didn't work with their old device.
Eventually USB-C will be so capable and ubiquitous, this will be a non-factor. I don't miss the days of trying to track down the right barrel connector, micro-HDMI cable or proprietary and fragile network dongle adapter. Those weren't easier days.
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And every time I buy a new device and think I'll be able to use my existing USB-C cables I'm met with a new standard. Bought a new external GPU enclosure? My macbook charging cable wont work I need a 40gbps thunderbolt THREE(not 2) cable. Bought a new Oculus Quest? Neither my egpu or macbook cables work I need an $80 LINK cable.
I wonder if the the committee have looked at integrating colour or some other indicator into the standard so that cable/port capabilities are clear visually. Though ofc the design challenge is for users to feel comfortable that putting red into blue won't break anything, it just might not give the expected features.
> All EPR cables shall be Electronically Marked and include EPR-specific information in the eMarker as defined by the USB PD specification. As defined in the USB PD specification, EPR cables are marked as 50 V and 5 A capable. All EPR cables shall be visibly identified with EPR cable identification icons as defined by the USB-IF. This is required so that end users will be able to confirm visually that the cable supports up to as high of PDP = 240W as defined in the USB PD specification."
Both are important. I also wish devices had some UI to easily show the capabilities of a connected cable to the user. I could not find actual visual representations of the the "identification icons".
[1]: (page 143) https://usb.org/document-library/usb-type-cr-cable-and-conne...
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Explaining to my aunt or uncle or grandparents that, no, the cable and charger they bought isn't the right one for their phone/laptop/whatever even though it fits isn't ideal. Sure, it might just charge slowly (cue family tech support call), but it could also just show "not charging" on OS X for example, which is just confusing for most people. It's a real problem, even if tech savvy people are fine with lower charge…
Even I have this problem. I bbought an amp reader and throw out anything reporting below 0.4ma/h. So many devices come bundles with poor cables my house is riddled with cables that I just never want to use for charging. I'm actually TERRIFIED of pluggin anything in to my kids Switch other than Nintendo's official cable, incase I brick i t. Does anyone know if they've patched this? I have some Dell laptop charger USB-…