I'll never understand articles like this - let's not standardize on a form factor because not every single application of that form factor has the same requirements???
- Protocol: 3.0 or 3.1
- Power: QC, PD, or none of the above; how many watts
- Alt-modes: HDMI, DP, TB3
- Chipset features: UAS
Once you've assigned all of these to a color, the higher end cables are going to look like a pride flag or something. The solution is really not that simple at all and it's far from guaranteed that once adoption picks up that you can just assume your device/cable combo "obviously" supports what you want.
On top of all of this, construction of USB-C cables are far more complex than your run of the mill cable. They're active devices with apparently absurdly tight tolerances. Did everyone forget about the Benson Leung's spreadsheet of killer cables? Even if the industry can figure out a user friendly branding, it's still a roll of the dice for whether you'll fry your laptop.
Lastly, USB-C seems like a mandatory weakening of security. In a few years time, you won't have any other choice but USB-C and now suddenly any random charger (or cable!) could be the easiest rootkit ever deployed. The cute pen testing exercise of dropping USB thumbdrives with backdoored Word docs is going to get a lot more serious. I wonder how long until we have "hardware firewalls" that attempt to rein in USB-C devices. We're past the "USB condom" at this point.
Link: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1wJwqv3rTNmORXz-XJsQa...
Previous discussion (710 days ago, 397 comments): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10508494
not a property of the cable
> Alt-modes: HDMI, DP, TB3
not a property of the cable
> Chipset features
not a property of the cable
> They're active devices
Only long-length thunderbolt cables are active.
> Benson Leung's spreadsheet of killer cables
The check there is "does this A-to-C cable say it's A-to-C, or say it's a 3 amp source". If you use it with an incorrectly designed charger, the charger could get damaged. "Killer" is not really fair, because the only "fry your laptop" situation was an instance of a wiring mistake that could happen on any kind of cable.
cesarb is right, you can represent it as max protocol and max current, and type-A cables have approximately the same setup.
Not a rhetorical question; I'm not well informed in this field.
then each year as new standards are added you make the shade of green slightly lighter. then you just need to know what shade of green your use supports and make sure you cable and ports are as light or lighter.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gigabit_Ethernet#1000BASE-T
https://www.tomsguide.com/us/gigabit-ethernet-needtoknow,rev...
As for devices - I guess I'd say know what you're buying? How is it any different than the fact I have to know that some mini-displayport ports can do thunderbolt and some can't? Some cables can and some can't?
I mean... Belkin has already started putting the thunderbolt icon on the cables they sell that support it. This isn't anywhere near as complicated as he's claiming. The only gray area is people buying the cheapest possible cable they can find on Amazon then acting shocked when they get what they paid for.
Costly cables are usually better but you don't have any warranty.
You can use bensong leung tests to find a good one but need to hope that they have not silently changed the cables since his test.
When you buy a new device, you have no idea of the capabilities of the cable that comes with it.
So you need to remember whether it uses PC or QC or just always use it's provided cable.
All in all we are still far from "let's take any usb-c cable and connect it to an usb-c device".
It is too bad, it is a very nice dream.
Don't act like cheap cables frying your equipment is normal or expected. Off-brand products usually aren't as good as the expensive stuff, but we have a right to expect them to not be actively dangerous.
That's 90% of people though.
> It’s comforting to think that over time, this will all settle down and we’ll finally achieve the dream of a single cable and port for everything. But that’s not how technology really works.
Like they refused to do blue USB-3 ports.