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They overlooked the statistically significant case where it takes more than two tries to plug it in correctly. Knowing you might have been wrong makes you prematurely abandon an attempt where you had it set the right way.
It 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.
Hey, they could have made it not rotationally symmetrical but mandated an orientation opposite of the one that makes the socket look like a cute little surprised face, thus ensuring a long, drawn out, losing battle between the correct orientation and the looks-like-a-little-face orientation.
Technology Connections dig in to this in "Power outlets are topsy turvy - but does it matter?"
If we're not going back to circular slip-ring connectors that allow rotation (like TRS or DC plugs,) then the step after the +-90 -reversible USB-C is a triangular one. So you only need to rotate it +-30 if you got it wrong. Now I really want a triangular connector. Like in alien-tech movies.
It 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.
Hey, they could have made it not rotationally symmetrical but mandated an orientation opposite of the one that makes the socket look like a cute little surprised face, thus ensuring a long, drawn out, losing battle between the correct orientation and the looks-like-a-little-face orientation.
If you have a reversible connector, then you might be entangled in a dilemma of which way is the "better" or "optimal" or "canonical" way, while with a non-reversible one there is only one way and thus no dilemma. And in fact USB-C is not really physically reversible, because the hardware detects which way it's plugged in and permutes the signals, as opposed to mirroring all the wires, so there is indeed a "right" wa…
And indeed there are usb-c hubs that only work in one orientation so we now have the worst of all possible worlds.
It 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.
Which brings up the idea of not making it size compatible with the network port.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I had to do a double take after reading this comment to make sure I wasn't reading an old thread from 2014 or something. USB-C has been out for years now and neither of these predictions have come to pass. Your comment aged poorly before you even finished writing it. USB-C isn't without its problems, but neither of those are one of them.
I own a usb-c male to usb-c female extension cable that I connect to a yubikey. The yubikey only works in one orientation. I don't have any other bits to test hypotheses with, but I believe the cable was made with the symmetry problem described above.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Hey, they could have made it not rotationally symmetrical but mandated an orientation opposite of the one that makes the socket look like a cute little surprised face, thus ensuring a long, drawn out, losing battle between the correct orientation and the looks-like-a-little-face orientation.
But is "that way" actually "Correct" or not...? Technology Connections dig in to this in "Power outlets are topsy turvy - but does it matter?" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vNj75gJVxcE
The rest of the video digs into the claimed benefits of turning them upside down, and finds that they're quite small and probably outweighed by the inconvenience of the sheer number of devices that assume that you're using the cute orientation.
>But in an effort to keep it as cheap as possible, the decision was made to go with a design that, in theory, would give users a 50/50 chance of plugging it in correctly (you can up the odds by looking at the inside first, or identifying the logo). I despise this "design decision." Literally bakes in the 50% of the time you plug it in the wrong orientation and lose seconds of your life. Who cares if the sands of time…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I own a usb-c male to usb-c female extension cable that I connect to a yubikey. The yubikey only works in one orientation. I don't have any other bits to test hypotheses with, but I believe the cable was made with the symmetry problem described above.
AFAIK there's no such thing as a standards compliant USB-C male to USB-C female extension cable. The very concept goes against the spec[1]. You have a point though; I'm sure there are abominations out there that abuse the USB spec in all sorts of interesting ways, they just haven't been something I've encountered in my years of using USB-C for everything. [1]: https://www.reddit.com/r/UsbCHardware/comments/10xj74r/wh…