Maybe that's on USB spec people for not having good material, but on the other hand maybe that's on the manufacturers for not hiring EEs who can actually read a damn spec sheet properly...
I think this is the hardware equivalent of expecting programmers to write bug free code on the first try.
Most of the time when a programmer wants to implement something a little complex and a little outside their expertise, they use an external library. Likewise, EEs will often buy a chip produced by a third party manufacturer and use that to handle it. But the abstractions available to EEs are often a bit more leaky than those available to us programmers, since they are more constrained by the laws of physics. and as a result that third party chip is still harder to use than a software library.
Then they add this part to their design, and lay out the schematic and the printed circuit board according to best practices by the manufacturer. Once the first boards return they put measure the signal levels and waveforms in their circuit to verify they are with the specifications and that they match the ones on the eval board. Then they will 'corner' test the circuit (corners are low/hi temperature range, low and high voltage range) and verify it continues to work according to specification at all the 'corners' (if it does then you are generally ok with assuming it will work at all points "inside" those for corners.)
There are people who are either in a hurry or don't care who wire something up according to the application note, power it up once and call it 'good'. I've seen a number of cost reduced 'clone' equivalents that meet that description. @kens has done a number of blog posts that show this sort of mentality in detail.
It makes sense for a monitor to power the laptop because it’s mains connected. But then you have one of those classic programming problems: if there are multiple inputs providing the same thing which do you consider the source of truth?
What you're describing might go beyond that though, in particular if there's multiple ports and hubs involved, that could be not just a usb problem.
See: https://www.theverge.com/2016/2/4/10916264/usb-c-russian-rou...
The real difference is USB was a completely new technology with zero market penetration so growing pains were inevitable. USB-C should not have these growing pains as they should have learned from 20+ years of developing the standard.
Analogy: we don’t blame Javascript-the-language-standard for the Node community’s constant (and usually half-assed) reinvention of build tools. Javascript itself didn’t cause that. More than likely, it was a glut of newbie developers joining the community—and building tools for one-another, rather than leaving it to the experienced people—that caused that.
Yes. Just read the NathanK or Benson google+ pages. Very few USB-C accessories are compliant - almost every one has some bug in its implementation, some worse than others. Apple cables are good, but even they took a couple iterations to get it right.
https://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/08/30/anker_usbc_cables_r...
https://www.seattlepi.com/news/article/Car-Talk-Car-battery-...
EDIT - here's some math:
The U.S. Navy FIRE CONTROLMAN Volumes 01 - 06 & FIREMAN gives 1500 ohms as a common resistance approximation between extremities, either hand to hand or hand to foot, for an average human body.
I = V/R = 12V / 1500 Ohms = 0.008 A
8 mA is not nearly enough to kill you.
But sure, it's probably best to not touch the car battery terminals when your hands are bleeding.
If electricity takes all paths, then whats the point of the mantra? It includes the highest and least resistance, and everything in between. The mantra is almost deliberately meant to mislead?
Maybe mantra wasn't the right word, Wikipedia calls it a heuristic. Regardless, I agree it is very misleading and I would never say anything like that when teaching or explaining electricity. Why does it keep getting repeated? Who knows. Inertia of the masses without a much understanding of electricity would be my guess...
In short, it's complicated.
So with a single low resistance path, give or take, all the electricity will go that way. But with two paths of equal resistance, half the electricity will go each way.
Interestingly, there exists a sort of upper threshold where the amperage is less likely to be fatal due to severe cramps preventing fibrillation IIRC.
Edit: the above holds true for AC but not necessarily for DC from a battery, where the thresholds are typically higher. But the heart is very sensitive and fibrillation occurs at very low currents passing directly through it.
This spec by contrast must be far more complicated[1]; also since it is so much faster, can't quality components supporting it all be more expensive - leading to cutting corners as a cost cutting feature?
Also if as a consumer you can't predict what "should" be about to happen (which way power will flow, what will be host) that is down to a bad spec re connector types. For example couldn't a universal visual indicator on a port (including the bottom of a phone) indicate its capabilities and what will happen very clearly? (Through symbols.) They do not. Couldn't a software popup make you choose? They do not.
Not to mention that it is not clear what should happen. If a phone can power a USB peripheral (like usb on the go) that means it could charge a second phone.
So if you connect two phones which one should charge the other? With old versions of USB phones the answer is simple: whichever one you put an on the go converter into, making it a master instead of a phone's usual role as a slave.
The fact that the spec does not make these as clear for USB C is down to the spec and design.
Can't USV C simply be badly designed? (overdesigned, underdesigned, badly designed.)
[1] Consider that a 1-page spec that can be read and implemented quickly in 15 minutes, can be implemented by anyone. A five-thousand page spec that takes 1,000 hours to read and understand can be implemented by no one (only teams). In between we have both previous versions of USB and USB C - but is it possible that USB C is too far in the latter direction?
They do when I e.g. connect two android phones together.
[1]: http://members.optusnet.com.au/eviltim/gamescart/gamescart.h...
It's not dissimilar to the box store HDMI/audio/etc cable strategy: Cheap, absolutely garbage cables at a mid-range price, or upper-mid-range cables at grossly over-inflated prices. Consumers tricked because of course the $200 HDMI cable looks noticeable better than the $20 one. Reality is the real retail prices of cables they're comparing should be more like $2 and $20, and the difference between that $20 cable and one that actually would cost $200 is only noticeable with high-end test equipment (or by 'audiophiles', who have the super-power of being able to see/hear a difference in cables as long as they know the price).