USB 4.0 [pdf]

> YOUR MILEAGE MAY VARY

My biggest issues with my eGPU have been with Windows' weird limitations on addressing space for devices, so if you have 3+ graphics cards (builtin primary, builtin secondary, eGPU card) you end up having to endlessly screw around with disabling and reenabling devices and device buses to change the order they're initialized in, messing with bootloaders to change which PCIe lanes get loaded at startup, etc etc. It's a nightmare.

By contrast, all my experiences on Mac have been either "it just works" or "after one reboot it just works". Still not ideal, but not anything close to the 4+ hours it took me to get it working on Windows for the first time (and after which it immediately stopped working again the first time I disconnected the Thunderbolt cable).

Yes they are, at least for now.

Apple avoided this by making it an "intelligent" port. There is a bit of handshake that occurs when connecting the magport charger. Until this handshake happens, the power does not turn on. When first connected the LED turns amber to indicate the connection has been made, but the electrons are not yet flowing. Once the handshake occurs, the electrons start flowing and the LED turns green.

I was under the impression these only work for usb c power distribution; do they also work for data, display, etc?

Any recommendations for a good one? I know the Type C market is rife with poor quality stuff.

Thank you for the offer. It would be interesting to hear their response. It’s seems there are a lot of people who like magnetic retention. I miss MagSafe :)

That would be awesome. If I were to say anything, it would be to emphasize that given a) the overwhelming consensus of interest from technical niches for magnetic attachment AND b) Apple's apparent acceptance of the current general status quo, it will not be long before general customer demand for magnetic coupling reaches a tipping point - while completely un-standardized.

One only needs to glance at USB 3.0, 3.1 and 3.2, the rise of 4.0, ThunderBolt, the current cable disaster, etc, to appreciate why adequate standardization would be a net positive for the market (less friction, better adoption - benefiting consumers _and_ vendors), and provide for smoother industry adoption going forward.

I understand that USB-IF standardized all the plug formats. This was critical to get right in 1999, otherwise nothing would have interconnected properly and USB would never have caught on. If we are in a similar situation today, standardization of magnetic coupling is no less critical.

Beyond the technical factors, standardizing magnetic attachment critically prevents vendor lock-in by eliminating the value proposition for introducing unique and deliberately incompatible designs. Without standardization, there is currently unlimited potential behind establishing vertically integrations (walled gardens) around custom designs. A great example of where this can benefit vendors while fragmenting the market and creating terrible user experience is the charger industry, which the EU recently began to enforce stronger restrictions on to try to eliminate e-waste (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22204174). USB-IF is likely familiar with this case.

Given the huge convenience factor and the practically infinite ways magnetic coupling attachments could be designed, it's plausible that USB might end up in a world of standardized plug-based connectors next to some n>1 quanity of vendor-specific approaches to magnetic attachment. (This is already happening, albeit as USB-IF ratified plugs next to arbitrarily-designed magnetic adapters built into cables.)

While I'm not especially familar with the technical details, I get the impression the market may carefully be circling Apple and their use of the MagSafe connector, and perhaps also related patents that may not yet have expired. I wonder if it's possible nobody wants to be the first to ask the question, for fear the answer capitalizes on the situation in a way that does not unilaterally benefit all. The only solution may be careful timing - waiting for successful market penetration, then quickly working to standardize before vendors get orientated.

(Clearance: feel free to quote and/or use for parts if/as you wish)

Please do. Putting the onus on manufacturers basically ensures the connector will not be "Universal", which is the most important feature of USB.

Please, do ask them. Also remind them that giving this much freedom to the market inevitably leads to attempted vendor lock-in.

Standardise as much as possible.

Type C magnetic cable exist, I have two of them.

I am less experienced, but my USB C experience has been less positive. Both my partner and I have USB-C phones, from different manufacturers. Both use different "fast charging" standards, and neither of the fast charging standards appears to work as well as with their respective manufacturers chargers (which as a side note are incredibly difficult to find replacements for). I also have a Nintendo switch, which doesn't charge with my MacBook pro's charger, and my switch charger doesn't power my MacBook properly. My car has Android auto, however the cable I was using would cut out if I played audio and used navigation, so I had to buy another cable from a different manufacturer (that cost the same as he first one) for it to work.

I've gone from multiple chargers with different ports, to multiple chargers with the same port, and specific cables with tags on them, and having to explain to my partner that you can't plug x into y, even though they all have the same port.

* Devices are a 2015 MacBook pro, an external GPU, a Huawei phone, a pixel 3, a Nintendo switch, two sets of wireless earbud. For those, I have 4 specific chargers, and two specific cables (3 if you count the moulded plug to the Nintendo switch).

There has just never been a large enough variety of connectors for each application to have an ideally specialized standard.

Especially the greater number of pins, the wider variety of possible uses.

But USB is only 4 pins.

IIRC when USB first appeared on consumer devices, Radio Shack was still going, but USB was the first consumer connector that they did NOT have a do-it-yourself solderable or crimpable cable terminal for, nor any truly appropriate cable. And they never did appear as years went by.

You had to cut your cables in half and splice them to appropriate extensions if you wanted to take advantage of the full 92 foot cable-length maximum under USB 1.

DVI is a pain! Is it analog only? Digital only? Dual link capable?

So glad that HDMI superceded that one.

Yeah but with those you still vaguely know what the port is used for. I have devices with a type c and a micro USB port that only use the micro port for charging. I have devices with a type c port and a separate power connector that can charge over the type c port but only at 500mA. I have devices that can output video through their type c port but only when using a Display Link adapter which on paper needs USB 3 but the device only supports USB 2 data throughput.

Serial ports (RS-232) were one of the most variable ports ever used. Each device that you wanted to connect to a computer required a differently wired cable. Wires mapped to different pins, pins soldered together. It was a nightmare.

DVI had the plug-of-death syndrome. the cross-of-metal was mechanically about the worst design choice they could have made. (the wierd connector Sun used, which had three vaguely analog coax connectors was maybe worse)

ok. truthfully, the sliding latch on the Ethernet AUI cut my fingers more. I hated that.

> USB4 is Thunderbolt 3

No, USB4 is a successor of Thunderbolt 3 (but similar enough that it can be backwards compatible with Thunderbolt 3). For instance, Thunderbolt 3 tunnels only PCIe and DisplayPort, while USB4 also tunnels USB 3.x.