This page was difficult to read on my mobile due to ads. Here is a link to the source of the interview mentioned in the headline:
https://text.npr.org/2019/06/21/734451600/ever-plugged-a-usb...
USB inventor explains why the connector was not designed to be reversible (2019)
11–20 of 544 posts
Re: USB inventor explains why the connector was not designed to be reversible (2019)
#12Earlier quoted context omitted.
If they made the connector reversible, you'd have to try to plug it in five times to get the right orientation instead of just three...
I, genuinely, have a USB-C cable which will only charge my phone in one orientation. That's worse than Type-A, since I can't even look at the end to see which side has the plastic bar, I just have to try it and obviously it fits, but see if it charges. Which means it takes about 94 attempts because I only realise the other end's not plugged in, or it's turned off at the wall, on the 92nd.
I have an A-C cable which has a reversible type-A plug (basically, it looks like a huge ugly lighting plug) and charges both ways but data only works one way. The first time I wanted to use it for carplay I lost some hair.
Re: USB inventor explains why the connector was not designed to be reversible (2019)
#13I know everybody is still on the high from USB-C but I'm still going to go on the record it will be one of the biggest disasters in cable history.
1) There's going to be video-only cables; low-voltage only cables; etc and this time everything is usb-c so you can literally only tell which ables work by testing all of the dozen cables instead of the 1-2 USB-As you have.
2) The connector is symmetrical but the pins aren't. You can see a wiring scheme of how symmetry is handled [1]; literally manufactures are going to cheap out and not do that and you have 1-way USB-C cables without any kind of orientation markers.
An obviously key'd connector like firewire / ethernet would've solved all of USB-A's flip it thrice problems. And this could've been allowed in a backwards compatible where old USB-A cables were basically a skeleton key and the new USB-A cables had a ward that blocked them from fitting incorrectly.
[1]: https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/125011/how-d...
Re: USB inventor explains why the connector was not designed to be reversible (2019)
#14One of my earliest experiences with USB was back in the day where I had a PC without any USB front ports that were free. So I grabbed my USB thumb drive and reached around the back of the PC tower and plugged it in without looking.
USB didn't show up in the O/S. Thought maybe it wasn't formatted correctly and went through some diagnostics. Eventually went for the remove it / plug it back in technique. Had a look at the back of the PC and noticed I'd managed to plug it into an empty Ethernet port.... yeah they're about the same width give or take some tolerance. Also usually placed right next to each other.
Back on topic, I do find those bare/exposed usb keys (like a yubikey) to be quite annoying.
Re: USB inventor explains why the connector was not designed to be reversible (2019)
#15It didn't really need to go in either way. It just needed to not be rotationally symmetrical while only going in one way. Firewire only went in one way but it was never an issue because it's shape conveyed a clear orientation.
I agree that there was more that could have been done to signal correct orientation.
But an additional wrinkle is that the orientation of the port itself was not static. On laptops and desktops, it was horizontal. On certain other devices, it was vertical. Often these ports were in hard-to-reach or hard-to-see places, and having to reconcile the orientation in each case probably added to the frustration.
Re: USB inventor explains why the connector was not designed to be reversible (2019)
#16Hear me out. The original USB only had 4 pins. I always thought a round ringed TRS style plug like headphones use would have been great. No way to orient it incorrectly.
> I always thought a round ringed TRS style plug like headphones use would have been great. No way to orient it incorrectly.
Now consider the forward-looking bandwidth implications with that class of physical interconnect.
Re: USB inventor explains why the connector was not designed to be reversible (2019)
#17I thought the tongue should have a little bump on the right or left, so if you're upside down you can tell straight away because the connector will want to angle over, rather than wiggling and wondering and doing the standard 3 tries thing.
Re: USB inventor explains why the connector was not designed to be reversible (2019)
#18Earlier quoted context omitted.
If they made the connector reversible, you'd have to try to plug it in five times to get the right orientation instead of just three...
I, genuinely, have a USB-C cable which will only charge my phone in one orientation. That's worse than Type-A, since I can't even look at the end to see which side has the plastic bar, I just have to try it and obviously it fits, but see if it charges. Which means it takes about 94 attempts because I only realise the other end's not plugged in, or it's turned off at the wall, on the 92nd.
I guess you need to mark the correct sides of the cable (and maybe the port) with a dot from a marker, so you know which way is "up"...
Re: USB inventor explains why the connector was not designed to be reversible (2019)
#19I know everybody is still on the high from USB-C but I'm still going to go on the record it will be one of the biggest disasters in cable history. 1) There's going to be video-only cables; low-voltage only cables; etc and this time everything is usb-c so you can literally only tell which ables work by testing all of the dozen cables instead of the 1-2 USB-As you have. 2) The connector is symmetrical but the pins aren…
I can certainly see (1) happening, especially with cables that come with the device they are expected to plug into. It already widely happens with fallback to slower bit rate or lower power charging.
But (2) seems very unlikely. Most consumers just won't even consider that it has an orientation, and after it fails a few times chuck it in the bin or send it back. If it comes with a device (i.e. printer or monitor comes with a non-reversible cable) they're likely to send the whole device back. That would be a ridiculous false economy for the manufacturer.
Re: USB inventor explains why the connector was not designed to be reversible (2019)
#20Hear me out. The original USB only had 4 pins. I always thought a round ringed TRS style plug like headphones use would have been great. No way to orient it incorrectly.
The iPod shuffle did this to decrease the connector size and count.