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Comment by artiscode | Hacker News Reader

Honestly, I'm waiting for old USB(USB A, USB B) to be deprecated and USB C become the new universal USB. As in ATM machine, you get the drill. Current USB cable situation is a mess - my phone is USB C, but it came with a USB A to USB C cable. Good thing I can connect it to my 2017 MacbookPro using it's original USB C charging cable! However then I can't charge. Sometimes I use a USB C to female USB A dongle to use my phone's USB A male to USB C. And the whole thing has become expensive, good USB C cables seem to be made out of gold. Life would become so much easier if everything was USB C to USB C

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Don't get your hopes up, as this is just a dream. USB-C only specifies the connector. What your cables support, and what end devices support is anyone's guess. See for example https://superuser.com/questions/1199917/what-is-the-d-shaped...

In my opinion, the mess is actually much worse with USB-C, as with earlier connectors I at least had a chance of guessing whether the cable/connection will work by looking at the connectors. With USB-C? No idea.

In practice this is significantly smaller issue than most media and techies made out to be.

Most devices are USB, they work and charge over the connector just fine. On laptops, connecting displays work as well. They will either use TB or negotiate for HDMI/DP which is also fine.

The only real outliers are crappy companies which deliberately break protocols like Nintendo on their Switch.

>Most devices are USB, they work and charge over the connector just fine.

There are USB-C Charge Cable, that does no Data ( To save cost )

>On laptops, connecting displays work as well. They will either use TB or negotiate for HDMI/DP which is also fine.

That is assuming the cable could do TB, which is also not true.

Once you get USB-C to everywhere to everyday normal users, they expect it to plug in and work.

It's not like we already had a cable and protocol that could encapsulate arbitrary data and transmit it between devices without concern for what upper level protocols were in use or what the data type was, with the only concern with regards to the cable being the max speed supported.

Oh, wait, Ethernet is a thing. I wonder how they just completely missed that when making USB 3. The only thing that should be differentiated between cables is max power delivery rating and data rate.

Edit: typo

It's a software issue. No one cares what the port says. When I plug something in the OS should notify me, and try to autonegotiate with the device. And if there's a problem, let me know what is it. Not enough power? Port or cable issue? Great, I'll just plug in a different cable into a different port, etc.

The OS knows the USB controller hierarchy, knows what the deveice wants, etc.

Cables might be a mess, but it's because low-level software is absolute bovine manure biogas plant on fucking fire level shit when it comes to user experience.

Just a few weeks ago I had to spend about 1.5-2 hours (not exaggerating) trying to get 2 Logitech gamepads working on Win10. (It worked fine at first, but wouldn't survive a reboot. It worked fine in Linux.)

> good USB C cables seem to be made out of gold

USB type C cables are active (they have silicon in them and handshake themselves with the host rather than simply being wire (possibly plus a resistor) as with old USB cables.)

Cost will come down as volume goes up. Currently the only way to buy a cheaper cable is to buy a noncompliant and possibly dangerous one.

> Life would become so much easier if everything was USB C to USB C

I would agree with the added caveat of "... and if you could tell by inspection what sort of cable you have: speed, power, and protocols supported -- and some way to verify conformance"

Most of the cables aren't going to have anything more than a few-cent chip that lists the capabilities.

That's true; a few cents of chip and a couple of cents more complex assembly, propagated through the supply chain. (there's a little bit of handshake for PD, billboard etc but I agree with your point that the cost will be pennies).

Once they become ubiquitous I imagine the usual forces will drive the cost way down so we'll end up with something like the current mix of good and crap cables. Hopefully nobody will advertise 100 W over 30 gauge wire, but probably...!

> Cost will come down as volume goes up.

I have no doubt overall cost will go down, but I'm curious by how much can we reasonably expect, and if said difference is actually meaningful.

Consider Type-C qualification testing[1] as it stands...it's quite convoluted. Any cost savings from volume economies of scale would be all for nought if testing such high-performance products can't scale proportionally. Given Type-C was specifically designed for the cost sensitive consumer market from the onset and how capability keeps increasing in ways that make one wonder if it's even the same fundamental underlying technology anymore, I wonder how close to the "market noise floor" a qualified device truly is.

In the defense/aerospace industry, it's commonplace for a $0.07 electronic component to have $10 of testing behind it before profit and indirect costs are baked in. Same outcome with MIL-DTL-38999 interconnect, which has literally been around for longer than I've been alive, supplied by multiple competing manufacturers, and leveraged by multiple industries (not just mil/aero)--testing requirements ultimately keep costs high. Although not the mil/aero market, it wouldn't surprise me if Type-C is already close to a similar point of diminishing returns.

[1] https://www.usb.org/usbc

What kind of BS phone is that? Pixels support USB-PD which is something I'd say should be mandatory if you have a USB-C port. I can charge other phones, charge from other phones, charge my Nintendo Switch, charge from my PC, etc.

That they gave you the USB-A to USB-C cable as your go-to cable is a red flag that they are peddling the connector as a marketing bullet point.

Huawei P20. It can charge my MacBook and vice versa. Using the original MacBook Pro USB charging cable. It's a solid phone, but it comes with a USB A type wall plug.

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