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Comment by pdpi | Hacker News Reader

Apple has the common decency to make all of their USB-C ports identical, and support just about every allowable feature I know of, so, in theory, there's no reason you'll ever plug a device into a Mac and have it not work because the port isn't compatible (even though it's physically the same). Great in theory, I just wish the ports were more reliable — I've now had two laptops with flaky ports.

Dell dropped the ball by giving this laptop two TB3 ports and one that only does USB.

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I have the previous gen model which also is 2 TB3 + 1 USB-C and it really doesn't matter much at all in practice. Since TB3 is isolated to the more "permanent" stuff (docks or eGPUs) it's pretty natural to just always use the same port since the cable layout is fixed. It's not like you connect random TB3 stuff to it regularly on the go.

One thing that threw me for a while on my 9370 was why I couldn’t get it to boot from a USB-C memory stick.

I didn’t realise at first, this was due to the difference in USB vs Thunderbolt.

On some MBP configurations (I think the 13 inch model?), the USB-C/Thunderbolt 3 ports on the left and right side don't have the same capabilities.

That was the case with the 2016 and 2017 models of 13" MBP w/touch bar - the right side had reduced PCI Express bandwidth. The 2018 model has full bandwidth on all ports.

Does the 15 have the same problem?

ISTR that the 15” of all generation had 4 lane TB3 ports on both sides. The distinction was the older 13” had two lanes on the right.

It's the 2016/2017 versions of the tbMBP 13". My understanding is that the the right-hand side have all the same capabilities as the left-hand side, but lower PCIe bandwidth.

It's definitely confusing and a bit frustrating that it's different if you're in a scenario where the bandwidth matters, but at least it's just numbers rather than devices outright not working.

I once encountered a situation where a particular projector would only work when connected to the right hand side of my 13" MacBook Pro (2016) - so it's not true to say that devices don't work.

They're identical on the same machine, but the Macbook only has USB3.1 (+ Display Port) whereas the Macbook Pro is TB3. This isn't very obvious to users.

On the MacBook Pro 2016 and 2017 they weren't completely identical, as the TB3 ports on the right side only provided 20Gbit/s instead of the "full" 40Gbit/s. Check out https://www.macrumors.com/2016/10/28/macbook-pro-tb3-reduced... for details.

Fair point, completely forgot about the Macbook.

Today I learned that Thunderbolt is the name of the interface/protocol, not the connector.

Mhm. Same USB 3 is the protocol while USB C is the connector. You can totally have USB 2.0 only USB C ports.

Many of the first phones that launched with USB-C connectors were USB 2.0.

Can you have USB 3.x over Type A?

Yes, USB 3.X type A has additional pins, all the “blue“ type-a ports can support USB 3.0 and 3.1 gen 1/2 depending on the controller powering them.

USB-C adds additional pins for alt-mode as well as a higher power delivery allowance, but the USB data protocol part of it is the same as any other type of port of the same spec.

Type A, Type B, Micro B, and C are all valid: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USB#Receptacle_(socket)_identi...

Additionally, it might even make sense to have the power plug only be USB-2.0, if it's cheap. No reason to have a thunderbolt 3.0 cable plugged into the wall all the time

Unless you want to use your external display as power supply and usb hub at the same time with just one cable.

Some of us do work in actual offices and not in some coffee shops down the street. ;)

but it’s not what parent author wrote. idea was to use usb-2 cheap cable as a cable to transfer electricity between charger and laptop.

USB 2.0 specifies a maximum of 20AWG wire width for power transmission, which would limit you to 1.5A for charging.

http://sdphca.ucsd.edu/lab_equip_manuals/usb_20.pdf

We're talking about usb-2.0 data over usb-c cable. It'll still have the power delivery of usb-c

And that wastes physical real estate that could be used for a more modern cable. And with more USBC / thunderbolt cables around, theyll also get cheaper.

> Some of us do work in actual offices

Whoah, what's up with that? Not sure why you're inferring this coffee shop story or why you're doing this smug posturing thing but it's pretty obnoxious.

Yep, before USB-C was out, Thunderbolt used a MiniDisplayPort connector.

>Dell dropped the ball by giving this laptop two TB3 ports and one that only does USB....

That was a serious miss on Dell's part. I'm not sure why they did that?

Makes it a little annoying for users.

Three TB3 ports would have required an extra controller chip.

Seems like it would have been better to omit the third port entirely, then—or, better yet, put a USB-A port there instead.

Having a Yubikey permanently installed, I can say that on the 9370, I don't miss USB Type A ports, but I definitely wouldn't be using this as a daily laptop if it had one fewer (two total) USB Type C connectors.

That would effectively mean I have zero ports free when charging and with my permanent Yubikey plugged in. It's never been an issue in practice, but I also wish that Dell would remove the ambiguity and make them all TB3 ports.

> there's no reason you'll ever plug a device into a Mac and have it not work because the port isn't compatible

You can't transfer data between two Macs using USB-C to USB-C cable that comes as a charger...

Apple dropped the ball on the Macbook, IMHO, by making the one port not a TB3 port.

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