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The Broken Promise of USB-C: We'll Never Get a Universal Cable

theatlantic.com

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Re: The Broken Promise of USB-C: We'll Never Get a Universal Cable

#51

Post by stephenr »

hu3 wrote: post #38
stephenr wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's a hint: the thing you clearly think is "inferior"... I don't even think about at all. It's literally a non issue that gets paraded out by people who don't use it at every opportunity.

It is inferior :) Sorry When my mouse starts blinking I just plug cable and continue whatever I'm doing and it's a solved problem. No second guessing if I can take a break now in the middle of a meeting, no unnecessary cognitive load, no need to remember to charge it when "I have the time", it's... magical. It just works.

Personally I don't find it to be a particularly huge "cognitive load" to see a "mouse battery is low, charge soon" notification and then just charge it at the end of the day.

But for those that do, it's great that we have choices.

Re: The Broken Promise of USB-C: We'll Never Get a Universal Cable

#52

Post by fragmede »

stephenr wrote: post #50
RecycledEle wrote: post #19

USB-C adoption will take time. I can imagine a day, 10 years from now, when I only carry an IEC power cable,a 2-prong power cable, a Cat 7, 8, or 9 Ethernet cable,a HDMI cable with a couple of adapters, and a few USB-C cables. If we keep improving USB-C cables like we have Cat cables, and keep them at 28 V, 5 A power delivery, with power meters on at least one connector, I'll be happy.

I don't know what a "2 prong" power cable is. If you're using a monitor (as opposed to a tv) you can ditch the HDMI cable, and use USB-C DP AltMode.

> 2 prong" power cable

C7 non-polarized, probably

Re: The Broken Promise of USB-C: We'll Never Get a Universal Cable

#53

Post by Shawnj2 »

mmoskal wrote: post #22

My "favorite" are these pepper grinders, milk frothers etc that have a usb c plug but only work with usb a to c cables since they do not include the two resistors that are needed to enable 900mA on usb c to c cable. And if anyone says cost reduction, SMT resistors are like 0.1 cent or less... Seems just stupid.

The much stupider version of this is devices which will charge the wrong way half the time. Eg if I plug my 16” MacBook Pro into a tiny Nintendo switch lite it will charge the MacBook from the switch half the time which isn’t useful 99% of the time

Re: The Broken Promise of USB-C: We'll Never Get a Universal Cable

#54

Post by [deleted] »

BobaFloutist wrote: post #47
fragmede wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A better use of money, imo, is to just throw out any and all charge-only usb-c cables. Life's too short to be dealing with that crap. (Speaking as someone that bought a tester but rarely uses it. If the cable doesn't at least work to connect my laptop and whatever peripheral that I have handy at time: trash can.$

I think there is one use-case for them: Plugging them into public usbc charging ports.

[deleted]

Re: The Broken Promise of USB-C: We'll Never Get a Universal Cable

#55

Post by theanonymousone »

I tend to be optimistic here. The situation I believe has visibly improved since 2017-ish era, where you had cables looking exactly the same, but only some of them working, and some others working when plugged a certain way :D

The third-part 60W USB-C charger I bought from Amazon charges my macBook,my Chromebook, my Phone, and my drill!

But yes, iPhone is different of course..

Re: The Broken Promise of USB-C: We'll Never Get a Universal Cable

#56

Post by creshal »

talldayo wrote: post #49
creshal wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Just buy trusted brands like Anker, Monoprice, Cables Direct, etc. for slightly more than the cheapest on Amazon. That category includes cables that can - do one of the many quick charging standards (or multiple), but data only at 2.0 rates - data at 3.x rates (any variants) but no power delivery - power delivery, but only at limited wattages, and data at 3.0 speeds, to slow for alternate modes If you know what you…

> and to them USB-C is that weird connector where they never know what'll work today. No? What world do you live in? Both of my parents have used USB-C for years, and they're more careful with their charging blocks than they are with their cables. All they care about is plugging in their devices to charge and USB-C cables do that fine. Both Lightning and USB are replete with non-conformant counterfeit cables, it's a…

Nintendo is the perfect counter example for the supposed "universality" of USB-C:

- The Switch insists on an obscure non-mandatory voltage that many early USB-PD power supplies did not support (and good luck teaching the difference between USB-PD and USB-QC), and even today a good chunk won't

- The Switch is the only commonly used device to not use DP Alternate Mode for its docking station, so it needs special Switch docks that support it (but an iPad will run with a Dell laptop dock!)

Apple at least managed to unify their devices on USB-PD for charging, but if you're using any other phone vendor, you run into the added problem that PD is a premium future and you're only getting QC for fast charging.

I can find a set of USB cables and a charger on Amazon that can charge any combination of laptop, phone and Switch at the same time with full speed. But 99% of regular, non-IT people I meey consider this witchcraft - anything other than "I use my laptop charger and the laptop cable for my laptop, and the phone charger with the phone cable, and the switch charger has the cable integrated" doesn't work for them and they have better things to do with their lives than figure out why, and I can't blame them.

Re: The Broken Promise of USB-C: We'll Never Get a Universal Cable

#57

Post by throw0101d »

From a practical perspective, probably just easiest to buy a Thunderbolt cable.

But I think that the USB folks dropped the ball when they made a whole bunch of things "optional" in the spec and still allowed the USB symbol to be used: they should have have gone after anyone selling something not certified but still using their trademark. Perhaps get the US International Trade Commission to do import bans (and equivalents in other countries and the EU).

Their naming convention also does not help ("USB4 Gen 3×2"? WTF?).

Re: The Broken Promise of USB-C: We'll Never Get a Universal Cable

#59

Post by grouchomarx »

ryandrake wrote: post #15
grouchomarx wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

charging the magic mouse for two minutes will give you weeks of battery life

The point is that a peripheral device should not be unusable while it’s charging, whether that charge takes two seconds, two minutes, or two hours. I can’t think of any other recent electronics device that cannot be used while charging.

>The point is that a peripheral device should not be unusable while it’s charging

why?

Re: The Broken Promise of USB-C: We'll Never Get a Universal Cable

#60

Post by phil21 »

creshal wrote: post #56
talldayo wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> and to them USB-C is that weird connector where they never know what'll work today. No? What world do you live in? Both of my parents have used USB-C for years, and they're more careful with their charging blocks than they are with their cables. All they care about is plugging in their devices to charge and USB-C cables do that fine. Both Lightning and USB are replete with non-conformant counterfeit cables, it's a…

Nintendo is the perfect counter example for the supposed "universality" of USB-C: - The Switch insists on an obscure non-mandatory voltage that many early USB-PD power supplies did not support (and good luck teaching the difference between USB-PD and USB-QC), and even today a good chunk won't - The Switch is the only commonly used device to not use DP Alternate Mode for its docking station, so it needs special Switch…

The Switch is an outlier early USB-C device. The situation sucks, but my wife hasn't had an issue charging hers with pretty much all the USB-PD power bricks in the house today. No special attention was made to buying these, they Just Work. I think we found one which we just tossed as to never have the issue ever again by accident, but that was many years ago.

Again, this seems to be a lot of social media hysteria over effectively a non-issue. I don't know anyone in my life who has a problem charging their phone and laptop off the same USB-C charger. Buy a 60W USB brick of decent quality and chances are it will charge everything you care about at a reasonable speed. These are folks who do not pay attention whatsoever to technology.

USB-C has absolutely improved the situation by a large margin. It's not perfect, but it's slowly getting better every year in my estimation. The early USB-C devices are starting to age out, and most things released recently are pretty good at conforming the basic set of standards you'd expect them to.

If you're doing out-there nerd stuff, I'd expect issues like anything else at the bleeding edge of tech. Such as trying to daisy chain multiple 4k monitors and the sort off one cable. That stuff can be difficult, but very few have such use-cases.

As a charging standard it's become pretty solid.

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