Hacker News Reader

In other words, they're still different ports (for all practical purposes), they just all have the same connector shape (which makes it harder, not easier, for the reasons you mention).

Put that way, I'm not entirely sure it's worse. Coming from a world where the connector helped you determine what you could do, it seems worse, but that's because we've all internalized the cost of not having the right cable and having to buy different cables for everything. Having a cable that works for most things (if you were lucky enough to buy a good cable, and I'll freely admit that is a clusterfuck of planning) leaves you with just having to know if your ports will work together. That seems solvable, even if it's not currently solved. I think we're a step closer to the dream of a simplified connector ecosystem, even if we aren't quite there yet.

Yeah, seems like just putting icons near the port, showing the supported technologies, would solve the problem just as well as having different ports, while not requiring different cables or space on the devices.

No. As a hardware designer, I can tell you that is a terrible idea. Yes, it looks clever at first sight (all of us went through that phase of thought). But then when you get the physical device and you get to use it, it is only a matter of days or weeks before you encounter many problems with that choice of design (inconvenience at best).

Even if the signals of some ports are electrically compatible, I try to use different shapes of connector for them if they are not logically compatible (the functions are fixed, not swappable). Because you can be sure nobody will always look at icons which are faint, small, can only be seen correctly under a certain angle and light, etc. Supposing you even know which icon means what. Supposing you can even have a sight of the icon and port, that it is hidden behind something and you have to try if it fits blindly.

You do not want to be called every other day because "it doesn't work anymore" because someone connected the wrong device to the wrong port :-). So for some serial ports with incompatible functions, you do not put all DB-9 ports, you put 1 DB-9, 1 round DIN, 1 rectangular (and hope they do not manage to fit the rectangular connector in the DB-9), 1 DB-25... It looks messy, shambolic? Yes it does. Definitely. But it is efficient because it is idiot-proof. And I mean a very large definition of 'idiot' which encompasses about everyone.

I can tell you about the number of times I 'plug' a USB cable into a DisplayPort or the power cable into the telephone plug because they sit in the same area and have sort of compatible shapes... I generally quickly notice because it does not fit well, but just imagine the nightmare if they were truly the same physical connectors...

I think my proposal wasn't clear: you wouldn't have a DisplayPort and a telephone port on the device, distinguishable only by the icon.

I think the point of USB-C is that the same port can support both functions, and so you don't have to care into which port you actually plug-in the cable. My proposal was just for when you were buying a new device, to make sure it supported the same technology as your existing devices - only then you would compare the icons.

You just reminded me of how I killed my first iPod: I somehow managed to plug the cable in upside-down. FireWire was designed to only fit in one way, but for whatever reason, the FW port I plugged it in to didn't fight back when I hurriedly tried to plug it in upside down.

I don't have any USB-C devices, yet.

Is it possible to purchase USB-C cables that work for everything? Or are (some of) the different supported protocols incompatible?

Yes. What defines the protocol is the endpoints, not the cable. Just avoid the "USB 2.0" USB-C cables, which do not connect all the pins (only the ones needed for USB 2.0). Of course, higher speeds and higher charging currents need a higher grade of cable, but that higher-quality cable will work with lower speeds and lower currents. Take a look at the Wikipedia article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USB-C

AIUI: nothing is protocol-incompatible, but Thunderbolt-compatible cables are short, stiff, and expensive. So you can buy only those, but you do make sacrifices to do so.

It's certainly worse from one aspect--you get less of the ports because they have to support so much. My laptop has a power port, two Thunderbolt, two USB-A and an HDMI. The new ones have just two USB-C, which can do all that stuff, but you only get two of them (or just one if you are plugged into power!).

For now. As those old ports become more obsolete they won't disappear, they will be repurposed as USB-C. Some laptops have both mini-displayport and HDMI (HP Pavilion). My Dell XPS has USB-c/Thunderbolt 3 and HDMI. At some point, HDMI will become less common, and that will free up space and resources for other ports. As USB-A becomes less common, laptops will ship with an extra USB-C and one less USB-A, until eventually, no USB-A at all. When's the last time you saw a PS2 port on a laptop? It used to be standard.

For me, I'm enjoying the power of the USB-c/Thunderbolt connector on my Dell XPS. I use a docking station, which I'm sending 4k video and audio out to while receiving video, mouse, ethernet and power over the same cable. One cable docking is amazing, and really shows off the possibilities of the technology (although in this case I'm pretty sure it's Thunderbolt doing the heavy lifting).

But the CPU and chipset need to talk to all those ports. If any USB-C port can suddenly need to do Thunderbolt 3, that’s ridiculous bandwidth requirements. You probably can’t do that to 8 ports on anything.

This is exactly the sort of problem that tends to go away over time (often before it becomes an actual problem for very many people). The PCI-E and even RAM bandwidth of modern chipsets would have been absolutely astounding 10 years ago.

You can share bandwidth among the ports. The default option for 8 ports would use 4 PCIe lanes for each pair of ports. But even full bandwidth for all ports is 32 lanes, not too hard to do.

How many lanes does your CPU have?

Not enough, because it's six year old tech.

But even my CPU could manage to have 8 lanes feeding a GPU and 8 lanes feeding a switch for the thunderbolt ports, something that provides enough bandwidth for the vast majority of use cases.

> As those old ports become more obsolete they won't disappear, they will be repurposed as USB-C.

... But they have already disappeared. The 13" Macbook Pro that I'm talking about just has those two USB-C ports and none of the others. If you are plugged in for power you just have one port.

Apple is very happy to sell you a $$$$ phone/laptop and then $$ dongles to make it actually work with the other things in the world.

This is old, but still gold

https://youtu.be/-XSC_UG5_kU

If you buy a 13" laptop you make concessions for on-device connectors, as you always have for ultra-portables. The solution is the same as it's always been, get a larger laptop, or use a connector hub. As for your Macbook Pro, that's Apple. Using the one company that's known for doing their own thing and obsoleting ports before every other company does as your case for USB-C having caused other ports disappear already isn't a convincing to me. For example, the touch bar version of the Macbook Pro 13" has four USB-C ports. Apple has made a decision to obsolete USB-A. I'm not surprised, for the reasons I gave before.

> If you buy a 13" laptop you make concessions for on-device connectors, as you always have for ultra-portables.

My old 10.1" has:

* 1 power connector

* 1 ethernet connector

* 1 VGA connector

* 3 USB ports

* 2 audio jacks

* 1 memory card slot

* 1 mysterious connector

I have the 15" MacBook Pro which has 4 USB-C ports. I also picked up the HDMI adapter. The adapter has a USB-A port, an HDMI port, and a USB-C power pass-through port. By plugging my charge cable into it I get power, external USB, and an HDMI monitor and it takes up only 1 USB-C port. I also like the fact that I can plug this contraption into the laptop from either side.

I would much rather have 4 USB-C ports than even 8 ports that all do one thing only. It's like having $40 cash instead of 8x $10 gift certificates (of which perhaps only one you might want to use).

I understand your point, but my experience is the opposite. On my old MBP, I'd be using nearly every port when docked at the desk. My 2016 MBPwT has only four connections which means that at power+GbE+DP+mouse&keyboard I'm now out of ports for anything else. My only option is spend even more money on a docking station which has its own share of problems (I've been searching for a decent one forever).

It wouldn't be so bad if it wasn't for the fact that USB-C/TB3 has been such a disaster and even mechanically a disappointment.

I was stoked before getting my Dell Precision 5510 (aka XPS 15 Pro) that it would have a USB-C docking station. It would be awesome with one tiny cable for power+displays+all my desktop USB devices.

But it's never actually worked, I ended up RMAing the docking station. Since the laptop itself can only support one display, I can't have dual monitors. So now I have a 43" 4K monitor, a USB hub and a power connector that I need to plug in/out all the time. And Win10 still gets confused about DPIs and scaling and stuff.

On my ancient-but-still-kicking Dell Precision, at least the docking station actually works and you can simply click in and out in three seconds.

Get a CalDigit TS3, we have them at the Office and the Precision 5510 works even on Linux with them flawlessly.

Thanks, will try!

The problem is the unicorn cable that can safely support the dizzying array of power and data transfer options afforded by USB-C costs alot and negates the cost advantage of a single port.

USB-C solves problems that nobody actually had, and in doing so creates a bunch of new ones that are expensive and difficult to solve for the end user. It isn’t quite as dumb as 801.11ad docking, but it’s close.

The do-it-all cables won't cost a lot (two words) forever.

Once do-it-all chipsets get cheaper, all ports will do everything a user expects of them.

Type-C isn't great TODAY and that's because many implementations of Type-C are first generation.

Shitting on 1st generation technology implementations and saying it's a technology problem rather than an implementation problem isn't helping.

How long is a generation? USB-C products have been in production and shipping since 2014. It's been on the drawing board way before then.

When the first USB rolled out I don't remember any issues like this. The big problem with previous tech was lack of support (like only having one usb-2 port and the rest being usb-1.1) and expensive cables (we do have those with USB-C). These[1] were fairly ubiquitous for a good 10 years and I don't remember any issues.

I feel like there could have been better consumer-facing design--like color bands to mark support on cables and ports (just like USB-2 was blue and USB-3 were red). They would designate if a cable or port would support Thunderbolt, USB-3, HDMI, DisplayPort, or high power. Resistors have been doing it for almost 100 years and this version would be much simpler. Or like PCI-E have like a lane system where more lanes support higher level features.

But this isn't only a branding problem with incompatible cables. You just can't have a USB-C hub with this standard. From my (possibly flawed) understanding, because USB-C switches modes to carry something like DisplayPort, for example, you can't also carry a USB-C signal at the same time, so you can't split USB-C (without one of the ports shutting off while in that mode). Maybe you could if you hub didn't support those exclusive modes? I haven't seen any actual USB-C hubs for sale (that give you more USB-C ports on the other side).

[1] https://images10.newegg.com/ProductImageCompressAll300/12-20...

> From my (possibly flawed) understanding, because USB-C switches modes to carry something like DisplayPort, for example, you can't also carry a USB-C signal at the same time, so you can't split USB-C (without one of the ports shutting off while in that mode).

I'm not sure how all those one-cable USB-C docking stations work then, as they carry video and audio one direction (to the dock and then out to the screen), and multiple USB devices and power the other direction (from the wall and connected peripherals and through the dock). If it truly couldn't do multiple things at once, none of these docking stations would work with a single cable, and they do.

After looking some more I do see a few hubs that offer 2 usb-C ports in a hub, but no more than that and I see nothing but complaints: for example, it doesn't carry power or can't send a signal to their monitor. A Belkin rep replied and said that their hub is designed for peripherals, but I don't see any technical reasons.

This post[1] says > What the problems is - how the USB-C lines within a cable are used is determined at plug-in time, depending on what you plug in downstream of the port. For example, you can't have full speed USB 3.1 and full video at the same time. So the USB-C makes a choice for you. If you plug in both a high-res monitior and USB 3, then you can't have both at once.

Still not technically clear to me. It does sound like with just a hub your transfer speed will drop when using a hub and driving a monitor. Maybe the limitation I'm thinking of is if USB-C is carrying something like Thunderbolt, you can't carry a second Thunderbolt signal? Because USB-C splitting compromises so much, they're so rare in the market?

I have heard the order in which you plug in USB-C will tell it which direction to charge (which gives credence to things being determined at plug-in time). For example, plugging the cable into your phone then plugging it into a computer will make the phone charge the computer instead of vice versa. When I heard that they were speaking about a specific phone and laptop, so it wasn't theoretical, but I'm having a hard time corroborating this. This [2] article says the direction power flows is a computer setting. What's scary is there's a lot of articles warning you not to use your USB-C laptop charger to charge your phone because it could fry it.

[1] https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/206365/why-are-the...

[2] https://www.digitaltrends.com/computing/charging-via-usb-c/

Thunderbolt combines PCI Express (PCIe) and DisplayPort (DP) into two serial signals and additionally provides DC power, all in one cable. Up to six peripherals may be supported by one connector through various topologies.

> From my (possibly flawed) understanding, because USB-C switches modes to carry something like DisplayPort, for example, you can't also carry a USB-C signal at the same time

A USB-C connector has one USB 2.0 pair, four high-speed differential pairs, and two sideband wires. For USB 2.0 you need only the USB 2.0 pair, for USB 3.1 you need the USB 2.0 pair and two of the high-speed differential pairs.

For DisplayPort, you need two or four of the differential pairs, plus the two sideband wires. If you're using two of the differential pairs for DisplayPort, you can use the full USB 3.1 at the same time; if you're using four of the differential pairs for DisplayPort, you still have USB 2.0 left.

The same applies to other alternate modes. As long as they need at most two of the differential pairs, you have USB 3.1, otherwise you have USB 2.0. And power delivery has its own set of wires, so it's also always available.

(The exception is the 3.5mm plug adapter alternate mode, where everything except analog audio and slow charging is unavailable.)

It's more like ethernet. Just because the physical layer connects doesn't mean they speak the same protocol, and I'm of the opinion that's just fine.

I like the analogy but it has two flaws:

1. Missing protocols in the IP layer can be solved by software. If your CPU is missing a thunderbolt chipset, a driver update will not help you.

2. The physical layer is not actually the same, some USB-C cables don't have all the necessary pins for power charge or high speed data.

Yep - there's no obvious way to tell what accessories will work together anymore.

My Switch is another great example. It won't even charge with some of my adapters, and I had to get a C -> HDMI splitter that was designed specifically for the Switch, despite the fact that Nintendo isn't even using any proprietary protocols (just less common ones).

By this argument, wifi or bluetooth are even more insane. An interface that isn't a single-trick pony doesn't sound insane to me.

But in the case of wifi or bluetooth you don't have to think about if your transfer medium supports the protocol or not (it's just dumb vacuum). In the case of USB the cable can be the weak link.

Also in the case of wifi and bluetooth compatibility issues have a chance to be resolved in software on your end. In the case of USB the list of supported protocols is the property of the hardware interface and the options to resolve these issues are limited.

In the end if you buy a device that has an "USB" port the specification that it has "USB-C" is meaningless, you want to know the exact list of hardware protocols that the port supports.

> But in the case of wifi or bluetooth you don't have to think about if your transfer medium supports the protocol or not

Sure you can - it's gotten better in recent years, but it used to be that a lot of devices didn't support WPA2. This was (typically at least) not fixed in software.

A coworker of mine had a Cinema Display plugged in to the Thunderbolt 2 port on her old laptop. When she upgraded to the Thunderbolt 3 MacBook, she bought a Thunderbolt 2 -> 3 adaptor for the monitor.

Turns out that it was a mini-DisplayPort version of the Cinema Display, and that even though it worked fine with the built-in Thunderbolt 2 port, it didn't with the one in the adaptor. She ended up trading her Cinema Display with somebody who had the Thunderbolt version and an old laptop, because at the time that was easier than finding an mDP->USB-C adaptor.

To quote the page (emphasis is theirs):

"COMPATIBILITY

MacBook Google Chromebook Pixel MacBook Pro (2016) Dell XPS 13”

So those devices work and everything else is a bonus, I guess.

I could also be Thunderbolt, the like the LG 27-inch that Apple sells.

Not only that, it's possible that a USB port on a monitor is only because the monitor contains a USB hub and it doesn't accept video over USB at all.

Agreed. Trying to find perfect monitor for MacBook has been an adventure.