M1 Thunderbolt ports don’t fully support USB 3.1 Gen 2

Post by faller » Mon, Apr 18, 2022, 2:12 PM UTC

jandrese wrote: post #127

faller wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why? To solve what exactly? In a sane world, it'd be major.minor, with nothing appended at the end. It's always important to get acquainted with a topic before succumbing to the desire to mindlessly criticize in ignorance. A quick search in Wikipedia shows that USB 3.1 specifies a brand new transfer rate, dubbed SuperSpeed+ transfer mode , " (...)which can transfer data at up to 10 Gbit/s over the existing USB3-typ…

Adding a new transfer rate seems like a reasonable place to bump the minor version number of a protocol. After reading all of that I'm even more convinced that it should have just been USB 3.2.

Post by post_break » Mon, Apr 18, 2022, 2:15 PM UTC

harha wrote: post #114

matja wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Were you expecting to be able? The tech specs say "One external display".

Not sure this is fair to the consumer. Apple was advertising usb-c as one port to rule then all. When the device has two of these ports, why should the user expect not to connect two displays? Especially since this restriction didn’t apply to the previous models that looked exactly the same and are now advertised as less powerful. It would be natural to not explicitly look for how many displays it can handle.

Post by jandrese » Mon, Apr 18, 2022, 2:17 PM UTC

faller wrote: post #131

jandrese wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Adding a new transfer rate seems like a reasonable place to bump the minor version number of a protocol. After reading all of that I'm even more convinced that it should have just been USB 3.2.

> Adding a new transfer rate seems like a reasonable place to bump the minor version number of a protocol. After reading all of that I'm even more convinced that it should have just been USB 3.2. I'm not sure you read any of that. I mean, they bumped the standard version to 3.1 from 3.0 after adding a new transfer rate. Also, USB 3.2 was bumped up from 3.1 after adding two new data transfer modes. I also add that the…

Post by faller » Mon, Apr 18, 2022, 2:26 PM UTC

colejohnson66 wrote: post #134

faller wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Adding a new transfer rate seems like a reasonable place to bump the minor version number of a protocol. After reading all of that I'm even more convinced that it should have just been USB 3.2. I'm not sure you read any of that. I mean, they bumped the standard version to 3.1 from 3.0 after adding a new transfer rate. Also, USB 3.2 was bumped up from 3.1 after adding two new data transfer modes. I also add that the…

But then why rename 3.0 to 3.1 then 3.2? And now with USB4, everything is USB4. If I remember the upcoming standard correctly, your cheap USB-C cable only doing 420 Mb/s (USB 2 speeds) is now USB4! For free! If a USB 3.0 cable can suddenly become USB 3.1 (or 3.2) overnight, then what's the point of versions? And what's with "Gen #" at the end? Because a consumer is easily going to be able to see that a USB 3.2 Gen 2x…

Post by colejohnson66 » Mon, Apr 18, 2022, 2:30 PM UTC

frosted-flakes wrote: post #136

colejohnson66 wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But then why rename 3.0 to 3.1 then 3.2? And now with USB4, everything is USB4. If I remember the upcoming standard correctly, your cheap USB-C cable only doing 420 Mb/s (USB 2 speeds) is now USB4! For free! If a USB 3.0 cable can suddenly become USB 3.1 (or 3.2) overnight, then what's the point of versions? And what's with "Gen #" at the end? Because a consumer is easily going to be able to see that a USB 3.2 Gen 2x…

It's the name of the standard. I'm not sure that those names were ever meant to be user-facing, but unfortunately they are. If device-makers choose to support a newer standard (say 3.2), that standard needs to support older speeds (Gen 1), in addition to newer speeds (Gen 2).