Comment by ChuckMcM | Hacker News Reader

Comment by ChuckMcM | Hacker News Reader

A committee goes into a room to design a single vehicle that will do all jobs, it will carry heavy loads, it will commute to work, it will fly between airports, it will work on the watar and below the water. Such is the challenge facing these guys.

Is it surprising that it doesn't work well? Not really. The compromises are pretty extensive. And between the users demanding thin phones and rugged connectors, its really really hard to do that with anything other than perhaps titanium.

I have a bunch of computers, my oldest was built in 1968 the latest was built last year. Invariably the port complexity goes up with the older computers, and connector reliability also goes up. I've got AUI cables for Ethernet that work as well today as they did in 1984 when they were all the rage. I've got 50 pin SCSI-1 and 36 pin Centronics printer cables that are reliable and functional. I've got computers with 3 of the four USB 2.0 connections on them unusable either due to fusing issues or mechanical strain. I've got a phone handset (my developer's version of a Nexus 1) with a micro USB connection that won't hold the connector in the plug.

I guess the bottom line is that we can make really reliable and ugly connectors.

Definitely those SCSI connectors with the two little screws holding them in aren't going anywhere. But the original ones had ribbon cables. Those would be impractical on today's devices.

Those thick cables also had a significant impact on the mechanical strain - they required a substantial connector to avoid disconnection due to cable movement. But they were mostly used for desktops anyway, and weren't really intended to support the idea of moving the device around.

So, I'm sure most people appreciate the progress in the electronics side, the amazing data rates, the engineering of the wiring, the flexible, lightweight cables.

But where we've gone wrong is usability side of things. Why did it take so long to come up with a connector which can be inserted upside down? USB C is still not as good in this respect as a 1/4" jack - which supported insertion in ANY orientation since it's use in telephone exchanges since 1878!

1/4" jacks were also bidirectional - the same connector on either end of the cable. Another issue we have to deal with with USB.

I would prefer that any cable you can plug into a USB C jack is interchangeable. Conceptually, it's a pipe between two devices. If they connect together, it should work. I don't think people generally understand that the cable itself has electronics in it that negotiates power and data rates. And I don't think we should go down the route of marking cables either. They should just be universal.

I hope Apple takes the lead on cleaning up this mess. They've committed to USB C, and this is a major problem right now.

A major change I see between the cables and connectors you describe is the move from parallel communication to serial communication. This has brought with it a great improvement in speed. I suppose, we could have a large connector with just a few pins for serial communication, but then these individual pins would be vulnerable to breakage just as they were in the old parallel connectors. Maybe even more breakable due to their sparsity. Im surprised your connectors lasted so long.

Contact based connectors rather than pin based based connectors as mentioned in some other thread might be the answer. I don't know what problems they might lead to though. Personally, I'm a huge fan of apple MagSafe 1/2 cables.

Seen "The Pentagon Papers"? [1]

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aXQ2lO3ieBA

You meant "Pentagon Wars".

There are committees and there are committees. In this instance i feel it was a committee stuffed with company yes men rather than electrical and computer engineers.

And thus we get a "standard" that is very adaptable to company "needs" but a nightmare in terms of electrical and computing (never mind basic daily usage).

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