USB kills off SuperSpeed branding
theverge.com
USB kills off SuperSpeed branding
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Re: USB kills off SuperSpeed branding
#2This wouldn't be necessary if Big USB had better versioning numbers to begin with. They're right that customers shouldn't see "USB4 Gen whatever x LOL", but it shouldn't be a name underneath, either.
Re: USB kills off SuperSpeed branding
#3> “As we started to update our branding we did a lot of focus group studies with many different types of consumers,” he tells The Verge, “and none of those people understood the messaging and the branding, and they don’t understand revision control or spec names.”
You didn't need a focus group to tell you this (though I'm glad they did one). Just look at every single comment thread on HN about USB branding, at this point it's a meme.
Re: USB kills off SuperSpeed branding
#4The whole concept of "SuperSpeed" made it more difficult to understand what was going on, so I'm very glad to see it go. A rare hiccup in the USB consortium's otherwise unbroken streak of making each generation more difficult to understand.
The all-time prize has to go to the German wine producers, though, who regard a wine named "2001 Selbach-Oster Wehlener Sonnenheur Riesling Spaetlese Feinherb" as very precise and helpful.
Re: USB kills off SuperSpeed branding
#5> “As we started to update our branding we did a lot of focus group studies with many different types of consumers,” he tells The Verge, “and none of those people understood the messaging and the branding, and they don’t understand revision control or spec names.” You didn't need a focus group to tell you this (though I'm glad they did one). Just look at every single comment thread on HN about USB branding, at this p…
USB-IF is a forum of so many different companies the focus group probably was needed for CYA finger pointing if no other reason. If this branding doesn't work out they can blame a bad focus group and convene a new one rather than war among themselves.
Re: USB kills off SuperSpeed branding
#6This wouldn't be necessary if Big USB had better versioning numbers to begin with. They're right that customers shouldn't see "USB4 Gen whatever x LOL", but it shouldn't be a name underneath, either.
Names are fine, the problem is if you call something superspeed what are you going to call next years speed? Hyper speed? Ultraspeed? Turbospeed? You rather quickly run out, and that’s if it doesn’t start sounding ridiculously hyperbolic before that. And of course superspeed is super slow by todays standards.
So you have to either use marketing names that don’t mean anything by themselves, or numbers that naturally increase.
Re: USB kills off SuperSpeed branding
#7This wouldn't be necessary if Big USB had better versioning numbers to begin with. They're right that customers shouldn't see "USB4 Gen whatever x LOL", but it shouldn't be a name underneath, either.
Names are fine, the problem is if you call something superspeed what are you going to call next years speed? Hyper speed? Ultraspeed? Turbospeed? You rather quickly run out, and that’s if it doesn’t start sounding ridiculously hyperbolic before that. And of course superspeed is super slow by todays standards. So you have to either use marketing names that don’t mean anything by themselves, or numbers that naturally i…
That's the mistake that USB 2.0 made calling 480 Mbps "High Speed". Now it seems incredibly slow by today's standards.
Re: USB kills off SuperSpeed branding
#8This wouldn't be necessary if Big USB had better versioning numbers to begin with. They're right that customers shouldn't see "USB4 Gen whatever x LOL", but it shouldn't be a name underneath, either.
The problem is that there are too many "axes" to encode and simple version numbers would have never worked to encode that all: protocol version, port version, top-rated speed, top-rated power draw, optional features, etc. Not every device needs 80 Gbps and 200 Watts, and if every USB "4" cable had to support that minimum it would greatly increase costs per length to support a tiny fraction of devices. It would drastically simplify things when you go looking for a USB cable for a device, but the cost market of USB cables would look a lot more like, say, HDMI cables: just about only short cables and quite a bit of expense to them.
This new branding initiative may be on the right track, encoding the two axes most obvious to end users of cables: speed and charging strength. (If cable makers move to the new branding. They don't have to. That's the real confusion that USB should fix but can't. Branding is a suggestion, not a requirement.)
Re: USB kills off SuperSpeed branding
#9This wouldn't be necessary if Big USB had better versioning numbers to begin with. They're right that customers shouldn't see "USB4 Gen whatever x LOL", but it shouldn't be a name underneath, either.
Names are fine, the problem is if you call something superspeed what are you going to call next years speed? Hyper speed? Ultraspeed? Turbospeed? You rather quickly run out, and that’s if it doesn’t start sounding ridiculously hyperbolic before that. And of course superspeed is super slow by todays standards. So you have to either use marketing names that don’t mean anything by themselves, or numbers that naturally i…
LudicrousSpeed™ of course.
Re: USB kills off SuperSpeed branding
#10Earlier quoted context omitted.
Names are fine, the problem is if you call something superspeed what are you going to call next years speed? Hyper speed? Ultraspeed? Turbospeed? You rather quickly run out, and that’s if it doesn’t start sounding ridiculously hyperbolic before that. And of course superspeed is super slow by todays standards. So you have to either use marketing names that don’t mean anything by themselves, or numbers that naturally i…
That's the mistake that USB 2.0 made calling 480 Mbps "High Speed". Now it seems incredibly slow by today's standards.
See also: high definition TV