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Usbc.wtf – an article and quiz to find the right USB-C cable

usbc.wtf

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Re: Usbc.wtf – an article and quiz to find the right USB-C cable

#101

Post by philistine »

a_humean wrote: post #96
gehsty wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My understanding is that In any connector there are contacts and pins, the pins move a little each time the connector is engaged and disengaged making the pins eventually fail (or they could become damaged). In lightning connections the pins are on the phone, contacts on the cable, making the phone a potential failure point. In usb c the pins are in the cable, the contacts are in the phone, making the most vulnerable…

Why would apple choose to do that, surely that just increases their repairs costs bill? Is the cynical answer that it will fail well past warrenty in most cases, so prompting the consumer to upgrade because their phone has worn out? There must be a more charitable explaination.

It's more difficult to design and build pins for longevity in a cable? I think the logic with Lightning is that Apple can build a very structurally sound connector with pins inside the phone. After all, we have seen few issues with pins in phones failing.

Re: Usbc.wtf – an article and quiz to find the right USB-C cable

#102

Post by evgen »

a_humean wrote: post #96
gehsty wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My understanding is that In any connector there are contacts and pins, the pins move a little each time the connector is engaged and disengaged making the pins eventually fail (or they could become damaged). In lightning connections the pins are on the phone, contacts on the cable, making the phone a potential failure point. In usb c the pins are in the cable, the contacts are in the phone, making the most vulnerable…

Why would apple choose to do that, surely that just increases their repairs costs bill? Is the cynical answer that it will fail well past warrenty in most cases, so prompting the consumer to upgrade because their phone has worn out? There must be a more charitable explaination.

The more charitable explanation is that the pins for the lightning connectors really do not wear out. This complaint is a made-up problem and in the real world it does not actually happen any more than someone accidentally jamming something into the usb-c port and breaking the center connector. Lighting ports do have one problem usb-c lacks: they collect a bit of pocket lint that can impact connections and eventually needs to be scraped out using the sim ejector tool (or a paperclip.)

Re: Usbc.wtf – an article and quiz to find the right USB-C cable

#103

Post by philistine »

seba_dos1 wrote: post #76
recursive wrote: post #5

Seems to have a lot of holes. I'm going with a use case of connecting an audio interface. I choose "Connecting a device to a peripheral such as a keyboard, mouse, or monitor". Then I'm stuck choosing between keyboard mouse or monitor, with no way to go back. None of these are right.

Just for the record, audio interface pretty much counts as a "keyboard or mouse" here. The quiz also limits the returned options to Thunderbolt cables once you select "external hard drive" - which is pretty silly; I have plenty of external hard drives around here - all of them use USB 3 and none does Thunderbolt.

I think the quiz is taking the opinionated conclusion that your cable must connect to any external hard drive and provide maximum throughput.

And for that, you need Thunderbolt 4.

Re: Usbc.wtf – an article and quiz to find the right USB-C cable

#104

Post by jtbayly »

evgen wrote: post #102
a_humean wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would apple choose to do that, surely that just increases their repairs costs bill? Is the cynical answer that it will fail well past warrenty in most cases, so prompting the consumer to upgrade because their phone has worn out? There must be a more charitable explaination.

The more charitable explanation is that the pins for the lightning connectors really do not wear out. This complaint is a made-up problem and in the real world it does not actually happen any more than someone accidentally jamming something into the usb-c port and breaking the center connector. Lighting ports do have one problem usb-c lacks: they collect a bit of pocket lint that can impact connections and eventually…

True about lint in lightning ports, but not entirely true it doesn’t happen in USBC. Probably less common, but I know somebody who had to get some saw dust out of a usb-c port.

Re: Usbc.wtf – an article and quiz to find the right USB-C cable

#105

Post by satiric »

evgen wrote: post #102
a_humean wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would apple choose to do that, surely that just increases their repairs costs bill? Is the cynical answer that it will fail well past warrenty in most cases, so prompting the consumer to upgrade because their phone has worn out? There must be a more charitable explaination.

The more charitable explanation is that the pins for the lightning connectors really do not wear out. This complaint is a made-up problem and in the real world it does not actually happen any more than someone accidentally jamming something into the usb-c port and breaking the center connector. Lighting ports do have one problem usb-c lacks: they collect a bit of pocket lint that can impact connections and eventually…

USB-C also has the lint problem, at least for me.

Re: Usbc.wtf – an article and quiz to find the right USB-C cable

#106

Post by seba_dos1 »

philistine wrote: post #103
seba_dos1 wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just for the record, audio interface pretty much counts as a "keyboard or mouse" here. The quiz also limits the returned options to Thunderbolt cables once you select "external hard drive" - which is pretty silly; I have plenty of external hard drives around here - all of them use USB 3 and none does Thunderbolt.

I think the quiz is taking the opinionated conclusion that your cable must connect to any external hard drive and provide maximum throughput . And for that, you need Thunderbolt 4.

...and yet it's still suggesting a Thunderbolt 3 cable as well.

Re: Usbc.wtf – an article and quiz to find the right USB-C cable

#107

Post by leguminous »

Diggsey wrote: post #100

So the table lists "USB 40Gbps" as supporting an 8k display at 60hz, then "Thunderbolt 3" is listed as supporting that transfer speed, but not an 8k display at 60 hz? Which is it?

Maybe someone who understands the specs better can add more information, but as far as I can tell from Wikipedia, USB4 supports DP in two different ways: tunneling and alternate mode.

When tunneling, you are limited to DP 1.4a and wouldn't be able to do 8k/60Hz without compression (which is also optional, I believe). In alternate mode, which essentially runs DP over the USB cable without wrapping the protocol, you can use DP 2.0 and should be able to do 8k/60Hz. 8k/60Hz requires more than 25.92 Gbit/s (which is what you get in DP 1.4 HBR3, 32.40 Gbit/s including the encoding symbols), so I assume the alternate mode is not actually limited to the 40 Gbit/s bandwidth of USB4. Because it is unidirectional, I believe it can use up to 80 GBit/s.

It looks like Thunderbolt 3 only supports DP 1.4 (optionally, only 1.2 is mandatory), and you'd be limited to the same speeds as tunneling in USB4.

Honestly, if we are confused about this then I have no idea how the general public can be expected to know what their ports are capable of.

Re: Usbc.wtf – an article and quiz to find the right USB-C cable

#108

Post by elteto »

TomatoTomato wrote: post #8

Recommending a 3ft thunderbolt 4 cable for charging my phone in bed isn't ideal. Length and thickness/flexibility of cable are also very important although the latter is harder to quantify.

I disagree. This page is about the technical capabilities of the cable. 3ft vs 6ft is something you pick when adding the cable to your Amazon cart or whatever.

Re: Usbc.wtf – an article and quiz to find the right USB-C cable

#110

Post by AnonC »

gehsty wrote: post #95
RivieraKid wrote: post #94

Does anyone know why USB-C doesn't have a form factor similar or equal to Lightning (which I think is substantially better)? Would it be technically possible?

My understanding is that In any connector there are contacts and pins, the pins move a little each time the connector is engaged and disengaged making the pins eventually fail (or they could become damaged). In lightning connections the pins are on the phone, contacts on the cable, making the phone a potential failure point. In usb c the pins are in the cable, the contacts are in the phone, making the most vulnerable…

I don’t know if it’s this difference in structure that makes it so or not, but what I’ve found with USB-C cables (very limited experience on my part compared to lightning cables) to be more flimsy. Somehow it seems to wiggle more or is loose to connect well and the fit isn’t right sometimes. It’s tough to use such a cable when charging something like an Apple TV remote where there’s no display to show charging status.
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