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Comment by tzs | Hacker News Reader

USB-C is baffling. Suppose you buy into the dream of one cable type for everything. So you buy printers, scanners, optical drives, external hard drives and SSDs, and so on that have USB-C connectors, and you buy USB-C flash drives, and buy USB-C to USB-C cables to hook it all up.

But your computer only has two USB-C ports!

No problem, you think. You've run into the same problem before with computers with USB-A connectors. The answer was simple: buy a hub that connects to one of your computer's USB-A connectors and provides several USB-A connectors to hook up your devices.

You just needs a hub that connects via USB-C and provides several USB-C ports.

That's harder than it should be. There do not seem to be many of these available, and those that are tend to not have very good reviews.

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> USB-C is baffling. Suppose you buy into the dream of one cable type for everything.

I may be mistaken but I think that was the original USB dream as well. It's been a source of immense irritation to me at times over the years to find that I don't have quite the right mini/micro/whatever[1] USB cable to hand to connect whatever device I happen to have with me. USB-C just adds to what is already a mess of a situation as far as I can see.

[1] Don't get me started with cables that have USB-A on one end and some proprietary connector on the other: I'm looking at YOU, Garmin, with the stupid cables for your Fenix line of watches (which aren't great, btw: learn from my mistake and don't buy one), and YOU, Nintendo, for the daft 3DS charger socket that would have been just fine if it were a micro-USB socket.

Mini USB? I haven't seen new devices with that since like 2004. All phones moved towards Micro USB <-> USB-A. The amount of devices I have which simply have Micro USB <-> USB-A is staggering and almost always are the cables compatible with each other. My main issue with Micro USB is that some of the endpoints on _devices_ are badly soldered, leading to the port coming out. Such occurred on the Nokia N900. I rather have my cable getting broken than the port on the (expensive) device.

What Apple did though with MagSafe was simple yet elegant. It is something I do as well with my Micro USB and USB-C cables (making them magnetic; I'm using TOPK cables for that). USB-C as replacement for MagSafe is a step backwards.

Beyond 2004 Mini USB was used for the PlayStation 3 controllers. And sadly a lot of digital cameras.

I bought a 4K Action cam last year and a dashcam this year that both used mini-USB. I've also seen a guy making some open hardware to adapt some retro something or other being proud of picking mini instead of micro since it's "less fragile"

It's not baffling to me. Usb-A isn't appropriate for small form factors. USB-C is. Why can't I plug the same things into my phone that I can plug into my computer? I'm already phasing out USB-A simply because I think a device you can only use on your phone with a single is limited. I used to carry around a laptop to do network diagnostics... I've realised you can literally do the same crap from your phone by using USB-C dongles... and the form factor is actually better.

Mind you Apple seems to be missing one of the main practical advantage of USB-C by slapping a lightning port on their phones thus ensuring donglegeddon. This drives me insane. Apple for all the puffery about giving consumers what they don't know they wanted is instead giving consumers an inferior choice that ensures lock-in and keeps vendors happy.

Apple’s taken one step forward with the iPad Pro being USB C based at least.

I want a USB-C hub with at least 5 USB-C ports and no other legacy ports. Only USB-C. An added bonus would be alt-mode video transmission from my Mac and power. Does such a beast exist? Not that I can find!

Yes, it's somewhat surprising that all those USB-C hubs seem to focus on providing an interface to other connectors rather than just offering more of the same, as in more USB-C ports. Maybe it's a technological limitation?

In any case I'm grateful that the Mac Mini I upgraded to recently at least offers 4 generous Thunderbolt/USB-C ports.

Maybe it's a technological limitation?

I've heard this second-hand (or third-hand) and my EE knowledge is nowhere near good enough to say how accurate this is, but: Apparently the power delivery negotiation mechanism in USB-C is vastly more complex than for USB-A, so hubs with lots of USB-C ports would need new, more complex chips compared to equivalent USB-A hubs. It already took a few years for reliable hubs to turn up when we first got USB 3.0. I'm assuming the manufacturers might also be trying to hit USB 3.1 Gen2 speeds at the same time as supporting USB-C, which presumably further tightens reliability tolerances. I'm guessing with all that, they might not be able to hit the desired price points with this stuff yet, and all that complexity probably also takes a lot of power so bus powered USB3.1 hubs with USB-C downstream ports are presumably a tricky proposition too.

Not only that, but those two ports cant serve hubs properly. At work, I try two hubs connect power cable, two monitors, a keyboard and a mouse. It's too much data or power or something, and the mouse gets screwy.

Firewire was the better bet on that score. You could daisy chain them together. USB was cheaper, so USB got to win everywhere.

IIRC correctly Firewire was Apple's baby and they policed their patents/trademarks on that until it suffocated. You couldn't even call it firewire, you had to call it "IEEE 1394". It was the superior technology and it loped along until USB 2 provided comparable speeds and it became obsolete.

Sony called it i.Link

I think the dream of usb-c is daisy chaining the accessories. Haven’t seen one with an in and out port though!

That's because USB doesn't have daisy chaining (unless you count integrating a hub into the device). Thunderbolt has daisy chaining but it's so expensive that devices only use Thunderbolt if they really need it.

My favorite example that I use every day is the LG ultrafine monitor, which both receives video from and sends power to my MBP with one cable.

Buy into the dream deeper: lose as many wires as possible. Of course some things just need to be connected, but plenty of other devices sync or operate OTA.

and what do these devices run on? Only a handful of devices draw power OTA ...

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