Hacker News Reader

Comment by CrLf | Hacker News Reader

Technically it seems nice, but what's up with reusing the "high voltage" symbol for this? And "thunderbolt" is a very tacky name...

View on HN

IMO, nearly all of the icons on the side of the laptop don't make sense. The headphones are clearly recognizable, and the rest are just pretty shapes. I'd argue that the headphone jack is the only place you actually need the icon, since it shares the same shape as the goatse-plug next to it (whatever that's supposed to be).

The other mini-jack is an audio line in.

I was surprised about the symbol as well. It's just a matter of time until someone gets hurt while trying to connect their peripherals to a transformer.

Perhaps true, but how exactly would you mate the connector with a high voltage power source without a massive amount of kludgery?

my sister recently plugged a usb cable into an ethernet port. don't assume that because something seems like a massive amount of kludgery to you that a user won't do it anyway.

I plugged a USB cable into an Ethernet port many times! Not intentionally, obviously, but I did it because the USB plug has just the right width to fit snugly in an Ethernet port. It’s easy to do when you are not looking. You should try it, it even feels sort of right in a very wrong way.

There is no kludgery involved when plugging USB cables into Ethernet ports. They just fit perfectly.

I once plugged an Ethernet cable into a USB port...I was a lot younger, and I took a file to it because I was absolutely convinced I'd been shipped a cable that was too big.

If you've ever done field tech work, freelance or otherwise, you'd know that mere physical incompatibility isn't going to stop some people from plugging nearly any connector into nearly any port.

Sad, but true.

No it will work exactly as intended. They'll experience a thunderbolt.

I don't think using a "warning! high voltage!" symbol for this will fly in Europe... (thankfully)

This was the first thing I thought. This is pure and simple bad UI design. UIs should move away from ambiguity, especially around concepts of safety. The high voltage symbol is a safety symbol.

Sure, this very second, there's going to be no confusion between the two symbols, but if this catches on and the symbol becomes ubiquitous, it will muddy the discrimination of the safety logo.

This is simply irresponsible behaviour from a tech giant who intends for this symbol to become ubiquitous. All in the name of "oo, it looks cool!". Bad Apple!

Of all logos for connectors that I have seen in a long while, this is the first where the logo actually evokes the imagery of the name/vice-versa.

$20 says it was Intel's idea.

Do you think it's more or less tacky than "Firewire"?

Always thought Firewire was a pretty good name.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com