USB-C was supposed to simplify our lives, but instead it’s a total mess
debugger.medium.com
debugger.medium.com
The fact that my laptop, Switch, iPad, and several other devices can all share a charge has made my life much easier. I can just sprinkle a few of them throughout the house and never be without power. Before it was always a hunt to find a cable, or I had to be in [x] room to charge [y] device because that's where the charger lived.
Plus, I can charge my MacBook on either side, so that's basically life changing on its own. :)
Not the issues, but it addresses the gist of it.
For that person (and me) it has simplified things. If simplifying your life is part of the measurement, it has for some folks.
this is a problem if you expect things to be like USB2 where you can collect all these random cables and power blocks and use them interchangeably. this wasn't always true with USB2 anyway, with all the out of spec "fast charge" implementations.
there are a lot of optional features and speed tiers for USB3, which is certainly annoying. but you have the option of buying a bunch of cables that support everything you need/use and scatter those around your house. they will work with any standards compliant equipment, which is really the best you can hope for with any standard.
Silly question time, why would we not expect that?
from my perspective, USB-IF has taken a bunch of random shit that manufacturers were going to do anyway and made them proper (though optional) parts of the spec. I understand it didn't work out perfectly, but I don't really understand why they are getting so much flak for it. I'd much rather have a bunch of cables and devices that at least try to meet an official spec than to have a bunch of proprietary implementations that make no effort at being compatible.
Literally half the pins are missing on charge-only cables.
>but I don't really understand why they are getting so much flak for it.
From me, because my partner bought an USB-C to 3.5mm jack converter that refused to work with "this device only supports official huawei converters". That, and two completely different cables with almost disjoint functionality look _the same_. If they mandated color coding or anything else to be able to physically determine what cable is what, I wouldn't complain.
That all said, the _charging_ story is decent enough, everything else is garbage.
okay, but unless you know which pins are missing, how do you know you're not looking at a data-only cable?
> From me, because my partner bought an USB-C to 3.5mm jack converter that refused to work with "this device only supports official huawei converters". That, and two completely different cables with almost disjoint functionality look _the same_. If they mandated color coding or anything else to be able to physically determine what cable is what, I wouldn't complain.
this sounds like more of a huawei issue than a USB-C issue. if a manufacturer is just going to refuse to support a standards-compliant cable, you're out of luck either way. color coding would be nice though, they could have made that mandatory rather than recommended. I'm sure companies like apple wouldn't give a fuck either way and would just go with whatever looked aesthetically pleasing, USB-IF cert be damned.
> That all said, the _charging_ story is decent enough, everything else is garbage.
what "everything else" is garbage? there are higher speed variants, but you seem to already consider it reasonable to look at pins, so that shouldn't be a problem for you. thunderbolt support doesn't need any special pins; it just needs a high quality cable, which is analogous to the charging situation for this and the previous generation.
You know it's a different cable and that's enough.
>this sounds like more of a huawei issue than a USB-C issue. if a manufacturer is just going to refuse to support a standards-compliant cable, you're out of luck either way. color coding would be nice though, they could have made that mandatory rather than recommended. I'm sure companies like apple wouldn't give a fuck either way and would just go with whatever looked aesthetically pleasing, USB-IF cert be damned.
That is made possible by USB-C standard. USB-A and USB-B cables were too dumb to support that.
>you seem to already consider it reasonable to look at pins
The pinouts are the same for all different types of cables. It is literally impossible to differentiate cables based on visual inspection. The USB-C standard is a unified charger and a bunch of different cables in with the same connector.
I just grabbed a power-only microUSB cable out of my cable box (it came with a microUSB-powered soap dispenser!), and it has all the pins, but only the power pins are actually wired.
With USB-C there are multiple official cable types, all with the same connectors, plus high voltages that can fry devices, plus complex protocols that are apparently too much for some manufacturers to implement safely.
Any examples of this other than the Switch?
Note that if you connect two usb-6 devices with a usb-5 cable (Intentionally using standards that don't exist yet) is may drop back to working like usb-5. If you connect a usb-5 device to a usb-6 device it should all just work - to the limits of usb-5 of course.
The cable situation before was pretty good, honestly. And if we could just mark the speed rating on USB-C cables it would solve almost all the problems. Maybe another symbol for the ones that can do >60 watts but even that is quite niche in comparison.
It might not be so terrible if they came labeled with symbols or letters or colors or something. But there is absolutely no way to know which cable does what once you've taken it out of its packaging that (hopefully) lists its specifications correctly.
Good luck remembering which white cable was which.
it's really not that hard. for travel, I have three identical cables that work with all my portable devices. for devices that spend their whole lives in one place, I use the cable it came with.
Interesting definition there.
Universality of physical plug, I guess?
In theory yes. In practice most of the cables are good enough for most users - e.g. in a home LAN cables are probably 10m at most, so even a cat5 cable can probably give people a connection that's as fast as their internet uplink. If the problems with USB-C are common enough to impact normal users (and I think lack of thunderbolt falls into that category) then that's a major difference in practice.
If you buy decent cables they all do. The reality is that whatever devices you're plugging the cables into might not support every feature you're looking for. Instead of blaming poorly built devices or ignorant consumers it must be the shape of the cable that's the problem surely.
And one big benefit of the current USB-C era is that 15-18W power adapters are more ubiquitous than ever, and compact enough that there's almost never any reason to use a smaller one anymore. And more and more devices are not coming with their own power adapter these days, which is better for the environment and simplifies my life, every usb-c device I own can be charged by the same chargers and will charge quickly.
It's way better than each device coming with its own adapter of arbitrary shape that may or may not be able to be plugged in without blocking the adjacent socket on the wall or power strip, with seemingly arbitrary max power output, with an arbitrary choice of using usb A/mini/micro connector.
With Micro-USB I had charging cables that didn't have data lines in them, Kindle power adaptors that didn't offer enough output for my phone to charge off, and non-standard devices that didn't follow the spec and only worked with certain stuff.
In my experience, it works well enough I've actively only been buying USB-C stuff where it is at all possible to do so for a while now.
It feels like these complaints are inevitable to me: a spec with no flexibility would become redundant too quickly or cost far too much to implement in most devices to ever see widespread adoption.
Depending on cable configuration, pinout, wall plate and structured wiring system, that 8P8C might be usable (or not) for multiple different types of data networking, from the assorted ethernet speeds (some of which may successfully autonegotiate, but not all) to E1 to token ring, or for a serial console, or delivering power and audio to a remote speaker, or hdmi-over-utp, or even -48V telephony, and let's not even get started on the only-subtly-different but actually incompatible RJ45S connector, or people sticking RJ11 plugs in 8P8C ports.
And yet the world has coped with this proliferation.
I have experienced none of the issues described in the article despite possessing 30+ USB Type-C devices. The article above simply comes across as an overwhelming refusal to take any personal responsibility for technical purchasing choices.
It's just incorrectly implements the switch to an alternate mode which it uses for it's duck which causes 3rd party docks to fry switches.
It's generally more sensitive in that alternate mode as it draws more power.
The dock itself is a different matter.
But the switch does implant USB-C PD just fine.
I'm frequently charging it with my laptop charger and many people do so as far as I know.
It's also why using a power bank with the switch works just fine.
All my apple kit works fine off the Apple chargers, but I do have an external hard drive that has mixed Thunderbolt 3/USB 3.1 ports, which are absolutely not the same.
I love the port, but the standard just hasn't caught up and when a company like Nintendo flouts it anyway, you have a big problem.
It has worked reliably with pretty much every charger I threw at it so this sounds like one of those urban myths.
> Our engineers have inspected your Switch Console and found damage due to USB-C Connector Damage. Under our warranty policy we do not cover the cost of the repair for damaged items. A payment of £53.50 is required for us to complete the repair.
https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2019/08/heres-why-nintendo-sw...
GP is giving you their first-hand experience with this issue. It’s a little disrespectful to call it an urban myth replying to a first-hand account.
FWIW, the Switch charger outputs a higher voltage, IIRC.
What was bend-gate?
The fact that there's a wiki on "what usb c charger to buy" for your switch suggest many others are having issues too - https://www.reddit.com/r/NintendoSwitch/comments/6jnkl4/list...
Personally I think it comes down to both the charging profiles the switch will accept are limited, such that some chargers don’t work with the switch - each USB PD charger supports a different set of charging specs (volts/amps/watts). https://www.reddit.com/r/UsbCHardware/comments/ch99aj/apple_...
I’d also suggest that some PD bricks/chargers might not be as reliable at sending power, if so, or if a cable’s wiring sends it down the wrong path, it could be disastrous for many devices that don’t take this into account. I am reminded of reviews of USB-C cables from a few years ago from Benson Leung.
Plus, Nintendo is far from the only offender in the USB-C space.
Else we wouldn't be in a situation where most (all?) Laptop USB-C PD chargers work without problems with the switch.
Either way, it would have nothing to do with “the mess that is USB-C” (i.e. the inability to identify which of the various wire protocols that work over USB-C cables that a USB-C port follows/supports), because such a port isn’t following any of the USB-C-cable compatible standards.
It’d be like saying Nintendo hurt the mini-DVD format when they used non-compatible mini-DVDs in the GameCube. Those discs have nothing to do with the mini-DVD standard; they just happen to share a physical substrate and so a physical appearance. They’re not claiming to be mini-DVDs.
And nor does Nintendo claim the Switch’s charging port to be a USB-C port. In all the docs, it specifically says that it’s just a port for the Dock or the Switch AC charger to plug into. It just happens to share a form-factor.
Do you remember the days when every connector looked like a DB9 connector with only some of the pins populated? (E.g. the various game-controller ports on the Atari, Commodore, Amiga, etc.) Or later, when every connector looked like a PS/2 port, with only some of the pins populated (e.g. Apple Desktop Bus)? None of these were claiming to be the same type of cable or jack or socket. None of them were claiming cross-compatibility. They all just happened to share the same physical connector—because it was a cheap and plentiful, easy-to-source part to build your own proprietary cables and jacks and sockets in terms of.
Heck, do you know how many random different types of cables are terminated with TRS or RCA connectors? Would you blame your hairdryer for “destroying the audio ecosystem” because its wall-charger is terminated in an RCA jack, and you could theoretically plug said RCA jack into an iPod (probably frying it in the process)?
The outlier in all this isn’t USB-C, but rather the previous USB physical-connector standards. Pretty much nobody used those for anything other than USB devices. Probably because the connectors were 1. expensive as parts, and therefore not really worth using in your own project unless you specifically were trying to be a part of the USB ecosystem; and 2. weren’t designed to be physically capable of meeting the current-draw requirements that proprietary cabling standards would want to place on them.
In being both cheap and capable of high current delivery, USB-C connectors are just bringing us back from the temporary reprieve of USB-A/B, to the world of the 100 years before that, where a physical connector tells you nothing about what type of cable you’ve got, because every fly-by-night company uses any random connector for whatever they like.
You know how USB jacks and sockets had the USB icon on them? That was because the USB Consortium assumed people would do random things with the USB connector standard; and so the icon was meant to distinguish the USB connector as applied to a USB use-case. It never really became relevant in USB-A/B, but it’s actually relevant now in USB-C. That icon is what tells; not the shape of the socket.
But if you have a standard aren't you supposed to enforce stuff like this ? Precisely to avoid the confusion and protect your standard.
Remember when people were mad about Apple patenting rounded corners? This would be as bad.
Someone making a port the exact size and shape of a USB-C port (within tolerances) is doing it for the purpose of being compatible, and telling them to meet the (non-onerous) spec to be allowed would not get nasty headlines.
People put TRS (3.5mm audio) jacks on random proprietary wall-chargers. They don't do it so that the charger can "be compatible with" the analog-audio ecosystem (what do you want to do; plug your charger into an amplifier?)
No, these manufacturers use TRS jacks, because TRS jacks (and sockets) are cheap parts. (Remember, they're not making these parts; they're just ordering them, in bulk, from some supplier that has a warehouse full of them. And that supplier doesn't care what they're used for; they just want to get them sold.)
USB-C connectors are now also seemingly beginning to be cheap parts.
But even if they want to, it would be better if someone stops them.
Consider the situation with standard NEMA 5-15R receptacles. As far as I'm aware, the design is not legally protected, but any manufacturer who made a '5-15R' receptacle that couldn't carry 15A--or any device manufacturer who decided to re-purpose the pins such that the ground conductor carried 240V--would have legal problems if they brought their product to market.
This is where USB-PD should be: in a situation where physical connector compatibility brings with it enough design assurances that any pairing of legally-available devices won't blow up, catch fire, or burn out. Ideally, any USB-PD device pairing should work, but at the moment the bare minimum needs to be that any device pairing is safe.
The Nintendo charging port is not labelled with a USB logo. It’s fundamentally not a USB-C port. It doesn’t make any claim to obey any standard. The USB Consortium was not involved; nor do they have a legal right to get involved, if Nintendo has no interest in putting that USB logo on their product.
Interestingly (to me), this seems to be a central point in Nintendo’s business model: they don’t do licensing fees, if they can at-all help it. They’re willing to break compatibility with some standard, if that’s what it takes to avoid having to pay someone a fee for every unit sold. That’s not exactly why the GameCube’s discs aren’t mini-DVDs (that’s more a DRM thing); but it is why none of their peripherals so far have had a Bluetooth logo on them, despite being in essence Bluetooth peripherals (but ones that sit in a separate Bluetooth “namespace” such that you need a customized Bluetooth driver to talk to them; presumably because putting those devices into the regular Bluetooth namespace would involve doing something that infringes on the Bluetooth Special Interest Group’s IP.) It’s also, way back when, why Nintendo dropped the deal with Sony to make the Nintendo PlayStation — they didn’t want to have to pay the licensing fees for printing CD-ROMs!
Which makes sense to me, because “licensing the port design” would involve trying to extract money from the wrong people — it would target the bulk parts manufacturers producing the USB-C connectors. Those parts manufacturers would have to pay per connector-part produced in such a scheme. Those businesses 1. operate on razor-thin margins such that there’s no margin to extract there, and 2. don’t have nearly the tight logistics pipelines that consumer-electronics companies do, so there’d likely be huge bins of USB-C connectors laying around awaiting an order, where they’d have to eat the licensing fees in advance of receiving payment for the parts (which puts a big hole in their cashflow.)
Much better to go after the high-margin device manufacturers and OEM integrators. But you can’t really pursue them for infringing on the part; they didn’t make it, they just bought it. They’d tell you to go chase the people they bought it from. (And, as said above, you don’t want to do that.) Instead, you have to pursue them for something they’re doing. Such as adding the USB logo to their product.
I do think there's something to be said for liability for creating a port that is so similar to USB-C, but also causing damage, akin to copyright laws, based on consumer confusion. I.e., if a reasonable person might think it is a variant of USB-C, and USB devices seem to work for long periods of time without apparent damage, then Nintendo is liable by virtue of resulting damage to the consumer's property (not to the USB organization). There's a certain liability for negligence in that case. But I could also see reasonable arguments that if Nintendo were explicitly saying it is not a USB port, that they shouldn't be liable (I don't agree but see it as a reasonable argument).
But if Nintendo is advertising it in anyway like that, they should be held liable. I just don't see a reasonable argument for why that wouldn't be the case. You can't have your cake and eat it too.
In the EU there's an automatic 2 year replacement warranty on electronics too.
What the port isn't, is a USB certified port. USB certification guarantees that it'll be safe to plug any USB-certified thing into any other USB-certified thing. Without that certification, the device isn't guaranteeing its ability to handle weird things that other USB devices might do—like sending it lots of current without doing a specific proprietary negotiation first.
It's a bit like FCC certification for "accepting radio interference." Devices that have it, are guaranteed to not melt down/throw sparks if you bring them close to e.g. HV power lines, or a radio tower. Devices that don't have it, aren't guaranteed to not do that. They might or they might not; but they weren't required to be tested to find out if they would.
But unlike FCC certification, where it's illegal to sell something in the US containing an antenna if it's not FCC certified, it's entirely legal to produce and market a device that has USB connectors, but isn't USB certified. There's nothing stopping companies from doing it—other than the expectation that consumers might care about the USB logo being on the product. If a company thinks consumers won't care about that in their case, they have no reason to bother.
(That's not to say Nintendo shouldn't have made their product fail safe under out-of-tolerance conditions from other USB devices anyway. It would just be good engineering to do that, even if you don't want to pay the licensing fee. But they didn't think to test for those conditions—likely because the USB Consortium wasn't invited to come breathe down their necks reminding them about things like that.)
Compliance enforcement didn't matter much when USB was just data and low-wattage electricity, but USB-PD provides enough power to be hazardous. That risk is not currently being effectively managed.
"Buyer beware" isn't an adequate solution to avoiding device damage or cables catching fire.
Somehow, I got through that time without ever having plugged the power into the microphone socket. I am not that careful.
Seems to me like that claim is false advertising at the minimum, and specifically exempting other charges on top of that is very consumer unfriendly.
this is not correct. Ctrl-f "USB Type-C", it's right there.
Also most charger are fully compatible with the switch off I remember correctly the only way to fry your switch with a charger is by using a charger with high voltage/amper support with a cable which doesn't support any form of fast charging and even then it might not happen. But most chargers which support faster charging do have the cable fixed to the charger to prevent any user confusion.
As an effect of this most (all?) USB-C PD laptop chargers work with the switch. Only with chargers for phones and small tablets do you have to be careful but again most higher quality chargers from that area work just fine, too.
I'd actually say its more like building a failed structure out of something that looks like, but actually isn't, concrete, and then saying that concrete is a terrible material to use for buildings.
https://www.nintendo.com/switch/tech-specs/
I was not pleased with it being an outside warranty issue, but I paid up just to get the thing fixed and back.
This is a violation of the USB spec, not a flaw in it. Anyone could deliver mains AC voltage over a USB-C cable, and it would fry just about everything on the market.
I think that is very non-obvious though, especially for the typical consumer
I was trying to find some information about what would cause PD-compliant chargers to fry the Switch. It appears that while the switch is PD-compliant itself, they used a slightly non-standard connector that reduces tolerances and could, in some situations (most likely worn cables) cause some pins to electrically bridge and fry the port.
To be honest, this doesn't seem like an issue with USB C, just Nintendo intentionally implementing it wrong. They should have either used a proprietary port for the docking mechanism rather than modifying USB C in an unsafe way then saying only to use their proprietary charger.
https://www.amazon.ca/Charger-Adapter-Replacement-Thinkpad-M...
Now, I'm a cheapskate, so most of my electronics are older devices, and as a consequence we still also have various other cables kicking around— Lightning for both our iPhones and wireless earbuds, Micro USB for Kindle and PS4 controllers, even Mini USB for a few random devices.
But as far as USB-C, I would attribute the current mess to growing pains. For a few more years, charger pages will explicit list the products they work with, and eventually it will settle down to a list of must-work-with products for all chargers, and any new products with be tested to ensure that they work in the same ways as one or more of the items on that list of known-working products. Didn't HDMI have pretty much this exact issue with EDID and other chaos, until everyone basically agreed that whatever Sony was doing was the right thing and they'd copy them?
The main losers here are people trying to do new ground-up implementations, since they can't just work from the standard; they also need expensive consultants to tell them the precise subset of the standard is the actual part they can depend on. But for end users, the trend is toward an overall state of reasonable compatibility, with non-working devices quickly acquiring a reputation as such and being shunned out of the marketplace.
The Switch and Switch Dock are not USB-C devices. That you’re able to plug in a USB-C charger or USB-C device and see it supposedly work just means that you haven’t yet encountered the scenario(s) that can electronically damage the Switch. Nintendo’s warranty does not cover this damage when it occurs, requiring a full-cost repair or replacement as you connected unlicensed and unauthorized hardware to it.
It might help resolve certain really common cases like compatibility between the chargers and devices of the mainstream entities. I guess I'd argue that that should be happening on its own, but Nintendo definitely dropped the ball with releasing a USB-C product in 2017 that was interoperable with Apple and other name-brand chargers which had been in existence for two years previously at that point.
In this particular case I think even well-known name brand chargers which follow standards (Apple, Anker) are breaking the Nintendo, and that's unacceptable.
Nintendo should have taken more steps with their charger to restrict the Switch to authorized chargers only, rather than permitting unsupported chargers (such as standard USB-C ones) from being able to power it. Or even just outright used a proprietary connector!
None of this is any fault of the chargers. They’re the ones adhering to the standards correctly. The Switch is at fault.
If you shove 9V into a 5V device, bad things will happen, regardless of Nintendo is anti-standard or not
Their website says that it uses USB-C for charging and the charging port accepts stock USB-C cables, it's not even remotely reasonable to bury within the warranty a statement which says "oh, by the way the device cannot accept USB-C cables -- if you use a made-to-spec cable that fits in the port, no warranty for you!".
They put USB-C on the box. They screwed up the design. They should be forced to have a recall, or extend the warranty.
Imagine you go to a hotel and see an USB A port on the wall and you try to charge your phone, then your phone starts to smoke or simply ignites. You find later that port was not a standard USB A port, but a 220 volt plug for something custom. Should the hotel be responsible for that? I think it should. If it looks like a duck ...
It would have been better if they'd launched another dozen different plug standards. In situations when there's only one thing you should be connecting to your device, that's the way to go. Universal sockets only make sense if they're actually universal.
Nothing above seems related to the standard. At the end of the day, its still comes down to the manufacturers to follow the standard in order for everything to to work. But the standard itself can't stop any particular manufacturer from making a non-compliant product.
Edit: A poster below this question said they fried their Switch by using their Macbook charger so I may have been naively optimistic in my original statement.
Sadly, the legal burden is placed exclusively on the buyer (via electrical code).
Generally, where there's a 30A circuit, a 15A circuit is also available, but there are exceptions. You may have wired a RV hookup with only a 30A receptacle, but you want to run some lights, or tools or ? with a 15A plug from that on a temporary basis. The circuit is (presumably) good for 30A, so adapting to a lower amp receptacle is reasonable --- it won't hurt anything to draw fewer amps through the circuit.
Adapting from a 15A socket to a 30A socket can be dangerous; the 15A or 20A[1] breaker or fuse on the circuit won't immediately open with a 30A draw, and the wiring will heat up during the time it takes for the circuit protection to open; possibly long enough to cause a fire. Of course, just because a load has a 30A plug doesn't mean it draws 30A all the time, there are conditions where using such an adapter is safe, but it requires knowledge of the load.
[1] US NEC code allows for a 20A breaker on circuits served by 15A receptacle, as long as there is more than one receptacle
The outlet plugs specify the circuit breaker limit. Most consumer electronics in the US use a 15amp plug, which can be plugged into a 15amp outlet or a 20amp outlet — but no higher, due to physical incompatibilities in the outlet design.
The electronics that use the 15amp or 20amp plugs are therefore built not only to draw no more than the amps rated by their plugs, but also to self-destruct relatively safely if they draw the maximum amps available from the circuit breaker backing that plug.
So if a cheap device correctly assumes as part of its "don't explode" protections that it will never receive more than 20amps due to using a 15-or-20 amp plug, and then it short circuits while plugged into a 25 amp circuit using an adapter, it could very well explode, because the basic guarantees of electrical safety were violated. The plug used guaranteed it would never receive more than 20amp, and now it's receiving 25!
This is especially relevant when you're considering how to make use of an idle 30A dryer outlet in a garage. If you just plug an adapter into it, and your device short circuits, it will explode even more violently. Risk of harm increases with outlet power.
There exist fancy "breaker box" adapters that have a 30A plug on one side, a fuse box with a 15A or 20A fuse in the middle, and a 15A outlet on the other side for you to use. It's not really an adapter at that point, but the presence of that 15A/20A fuse provides the missing piece of protection for your 15A/20A device that a plain adapter wouldn't have.
So in summary, the only way to safely use a 15amp device on an outlet that delivers power higher than 15-20A is to somehow inline a 15-20A breaker between the device and the outlet (or, to rewire the outlet and its power feed to 15-20A).
TL;DR: Hire a licensed electrician to tell you what your options are and decide how much you care to spend and whether you want to make permanent modifications to get the job done.
No safety margin can account for purposeful circumvention, which is what connecting a 15/20A outlet to a 30A circuit is.
I didn't say any difference was unacceptable, but a significant difference for 20/25 should not be accepted.
If the danger gets gradually worse for every 5 amps on the fuse, that's fine. Then the excess danger at 25 or 30 amps is only a tiny fraction of the excess danger at 100 amps. Good work.
If the danger has a sudden sharp increase at a certain amperage, then that amperage threshold needs to be further away than a mere 20/25 difference. Or even 20/30.
Most lamp cords are only sized 100ish Watts or ~ 1A with the bulb being the only fuse. If these somehow pulled 15A for any amount of time the wire would quickly get smoking hot but you still plug them into a 15A plug.
Devices are supposed to protect themselves. Most 15A devices will cause fires if they actually pull 15A for any amount of time. If you try to use a a small extension cord on your space heater, you will soon be smelling burnt plastic while never getting over 15A draw. That is part of why these are such a fire hazard.
Alos in the US a 20A socket is designed to allow a 15A plug to work in it, But not the opposite way as that would cause issues in the wall.
The actual range was a bit different by Ampage which I never quite understood.
The reverse of this is plugging big loads like power tools or vacuum cleaners into extension cords intended for use with desk lamps, but I think most people understand that that's a bad idea.
USB-PD is in a twilight zone where it can deliver enough power to cause safety risks but, due to its low voltage, is not subject to the level of regulatory scrutiny that other electrical products receive.
To date, the USB-IF's approach to safety and interoperability does not adequately protect consumers. USB-PD devices should not be incompatible to the point of damage but USB-IF has been unable to ensure this by keeping non-compliant products off the market.
USB-PD needs to be pulled under the IEC, NRTL (US) and CE (EU) regulatory systems and compliance overseen by entities with the legal authority to deter legitimate manufacturers/importers from selling non-compliant products.
"You can plug it in, but it might catch fire" just isn't good enough for a power delivery system that can provide 100W.
I do think there's still the matter of "Not all USB-PD adapters provide the specific electrical demands of a Switch or Switch Dock" to contend with — and that does tie back to the original article's point about USB-C being kind of a nightmare.
EDIT: There are still reports of someone frying a Switch with an Apple USB-C power adapter (which is USB-C compliant), no dock or anything involved. Whatever else does or doesn't work, Nintendo won't cover damage under warranty if you used a third-party charger.
The docks that do work generally reversed-engineered the proprietary protocol, and some have damaged Switches because they got details wrong.
Of course, had they used the native HDMI side-channel (which I’m not sure had been finalized at the time), they would have been able to skip this step.
It is very annoying.
Why? Why was it so hard for them to implement USB-C the proper way? Why were they allowed (and why did they want) to use patented USB-C plugs if they didn't want to actually implement USB-C? The only explanation I can come up with is they intended to earn money from repairing.
If it is true that third party charging devices is fine, then that is great news.
[1] https://plus.google.com/102612254593917101378/posts/2CUPZ5yV...
https://web.archive.org/web/20190301015818/https://plus.goog...
I'm pretty sure that's the dock that has a slightly nonstandard plug, not the switch itself.
A $60 bill to fix their fuckup? I'd have returned that under the (legal) warranty.
It's Apple's stuff(the irony of it, right?) that has all kinds of problems. I don't even charge my MacBook with Apple's chargers anymore.
Charging it has never been an issue for anyone and this is the first I heard being a charging issue
Not only has the Switch always charged safely, later revisions are also more compliant. The issue has always been with the charger and dock. Never PD compliant chargers straight in the switch.
The thunderbolt 3 + usb C thing is true though. My Thunderbolt 3 dock won't charge a non-TB3 device. I'd consider that a minor issue though, especially as USB4 fixes it entirely.
It’ll probably be fixed in future generations but Nintendo decided not to make design changes for Gen 1 and Gen 2 Switch to fully comply with USB-C PD specs.
Do you also think that the Raspberry Pi 4 USB-C incompatibility is intentional? That came out waaay later
The purpose of universal is everything works with everything. whoever breaks that is at fault and should pay the price. If Nintendo has used some other port I wouldn't have the expectation, but they used a universal port so they need to be compatible.
I know the switch gets the spec wrong in a few places, but there is only one thing I have heard about that causes damage, and that is knockoff chargers that grossly overvolt the data pin used for power negotiation.
Charging undercharged lithium batteries must be done exactly right or it can get dangerous because of this is often only supported by OEM chargers or some workaround like keep your device plugged in for 12h even through it in no way indicates that is charging and it will then magically work again (my last phone )
- A dock, the alternate mode used isn't fully standard conform and prone to fry your switch.
- A unlucky combination of cheap but fully standard conform charger with bad cable with switch.
Through wrt. docks there is some non standard compilant parts about switching to the "dock" alternate mode, maybe I misremeber and that can't damage your switch.
Anyway if you by anything but super cheap potentially broken chargers in 2020 I would be very surprised if it damages yours Switch. Especially laptop chargers tend to work very well with it. Actually I observed (but maybe wrongly) that somehow my Lenovo think pad laptop charger does a better job when charging and at the same time playing in handheld mode .
Can't this hazard be eliminated with some kind of "USB Condom" that would, at least, universalize your cables and ports ?
I have a USB condom that I use for standard USB ports for disabling data lines (turning them into power only cords) - I assume you could build a smarter, more sophisticated USB condom that would allow you to safeguard against these edge cases and incompatibilities ?
Can it be confusing? Yes. But it's a hellova improvement from bunch of disjoint cable standards we had before.
https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2019/08/heres-why-nintendo-sw...
Bricking your switch with a "pure" charger mostly only happens with but fully standard conform chargers used with the wrong cable.
Most (all?) Hight voltage/amper chargers like e.g. for laptops work just fine on the switch.
Through it's a bit more troublesome for the dock.
Do we say that a car was 'bricked' when we trash it in an accident?
A car that was destroyed in an accident would not be considered bricked because it has sustained cosmetic damage. You can't use it for it's aesthetics alone. e.g. in a museum. A Tesla car where the battery charger has died could be considered a bricked car though.
On the other hand, I would say that all of us here on HN probably aren't the target audience for this article. Collectively, I'd say HN readers are likely to understand that different USB-C bricks, cables, and devices are going to support different things and research our purchases accordingly. The article seems to be more targeted at people who will grab a $3.50 gas station cable and expect it to charge their phone at 18w and laptop at 65w.
Things seem to have gotten much better since the first USB-C only Macbooks and other devices started to arrive, so my hope is that we'll reach a point within another few years where one can pretty confidently purchase a cable or charger and assume it'll work with a standard device. It certainly does suck for now that you can end up with the wrong thing if you don't do a ton of compatibility checking.
In their defense, all those cable look exactly the same.
I haven't gone through the whole usb-c/thunderbolt reading yet [1], so I might as well make the same mistake. And the fact that you're supposed to do the whole reading thing is probably the source of the problem.
You see the same plug, same colors on the connector, you EXPECT to work the same.
--
[1] Most of my devices are micro-usb, my Dell work laptop charges via thunderbolt/usb-c but I've got the Dell dock for that.
Would it have been better if they all worked exactly the same from day 1? Absolutely. Do I think we'll get to a point where USB-C is categorically better than what came before? Also yes.
Maybe I do need to buy those gold-plated cables.
Overall, I don't think it's entirely unfair to expect people to pay $10-15 for a quality cable, especially since these modern cables are often expected to carry significant amounts of power.
On the other hand, I have never had a $10-15 Anker or some other brand cable fail on me without serious abuse. As a consumer, I'll happily pay the extra few dollars for the expectation of durability, a warranty of some sort, and the knowledge that the cable should Just Work with most of my devices, even if I know that the price is way out of proportion to the materials involved.
Can't speak for all other consumers, of course, but I would expect that many have figured the same thing out over the years of purchasing Micro USB/Lightning/30pin/etc cables.
Most charging cables get treated more like a power cord on a construction site - they don't just get plugged in and hidden behind a TV so the quality of the shielding and connectors is paramount to withstand the twisting and strains
It must be nice to have all new things. I cannot afford to renew all my devices every few years, nor do I want too. Just looking around my room now, I probably have several thousand dollars worth of SDR dongles, battery packs, wifi adapters, raspberry bits and external drives for various projects. They are all on the old connectors/standards but work perfectly well. I have no intention of tossing everything because there is a new cable standard with go-faster stripes.
Yeah, be careful with that - for some MacBook Pro models charging from the left side will cause overheating and CPU throttling issues.
Because I've had my MBP plugged in for the last 6 months, driving 2 external 4K displays on one side, power-in on the other, and an OWC 10Gigabit dock in the last port.
It's cool to touch, but I have the lid open (I use the LCD as the third display). I've read of people saying it gets hot when the lid is closed...
This is while the computer is under load (a Google Meet in Chrome, which is a power hungry little SOB). Also, the power is the only thing in the hot corner.
[1] we'll be able to do that again sometime right?
Problem: Physical connectors previous encoded information about data/power transfer mode support. When USB C unified the physical connector, that information was lost.
Solution: Mandate visually encoded supported standards on the USB cable in colored ring form, a la resistors.
Make them plastic, so you can snip them off if the aesthetic bothers. But I should be able to reach into a bin of different USB C cables, and determine what each cable can and can't do.
The law here for specifications teams should be: assume the consumer is never going to read your spec. Their ability to use the technology shouldn't be contingent on their doing so.
this is not strictly true, at least for USB. you can use a USB 1.x to connect USB2/3 endpoints, but you will only get 1.x speeds. there were power-only cables that didn't transfer data at all. they are all physically compatible. unless you're familiar with the pin layout, there's no way to distinguish the different flavors of A ports.
But suffice it to say, the situation was simpler / more user-friendly.
I’ve never seen a blue connector and ports in most laptops are just body coloured like in MacBooks.
I agree in principal, but please don't do it with colored rings. Many of us have much more limited color perception due to colorblindness. I recently purchased some 8 cable 1/4" TRS snakes, and the only thing identifying which connector on one side of the snake was connected to a connector on the other side were colored bands--many of which I couldn't tell apart. I ended up pulling out a multimeter to test continuity, and then labeled then with unique glyphs on each end that weren't dependent on color (i.e. 1, 2, 3, etc.).
You say that but, and I realise it's pedantic, your comment only supports not limiting the identification to only coloured rings.
Coloured rings would be a very good solution for a large percentage of the users. Glyphs will also fail with the blind, maybe with dyslexics.
Or of interest, would you pay more for glyph coded versions? Just pondering if The Market would ever create a solution.
Also keep in mind features that address a disability can be of benefit to everyone. For example: being able to identify something by shape can be useful to the colour blind, blind, and sighted people.
Speaking about Thunderbolt via USB-C it is incredible to sit in my work desk, connect a single cable to the notebook and suddenly having a desktop computer with three external monitors, keyboard, mouse, and many other ports. I have not tried an eGPU yet but will be happier if thunderbolt evolves faster and gives more extensibility options to notebooks. I cannot forget to mention that another USB-C dongle that I use can also be connected to the mobile phone and converting the mobile phone into another desktop computer with mouse, keyboard, and an external monitor. Before USB-C and Thunderbolt you should acquire specific dongles for specific devices.
As for an eGPU user - the issue with eGPU is the cost of setup, but Thunderbolt docks are also stupid expensive(above $200 for one). I built my eGPU setup for $350(PowerColor+RX550), as a good Thunderbolt dock is in the range of $300.
You may want to read this stack exchange answer: https://apple.stackexchange.com/a/363933
> TLDR; If your MacBook Pro runs hot or shows a high % CPU for the kernel task, try charging on the right and not on the left.
I buy USB-PD chargers and cables from reputable brands, and everything just charges. When I use the cables for data transfer, it just works -- no muss or fuss like there were with some of the charge-only converter cables for charging micro-USB devices.
Now if I were using Thunderbolt 3, yeah, you need a higher-end cable and there are restrictions on cable length for speed purposes (or moving up to a more expensive active cable). But I think that's a fair trade-off for being able to use that same cable for everything else as well.
We cannot WAIT until our household says goodbye to the last couple devices with legacy ports and we can throw the last few converter dongles in a drawer. Looking at you, Apple and Amazon Kindle -- when are you going to get with the program and ditch your legacy Lightning and micro-USB ports respectively?
Above about 1m (3 feet) a passive cable usually isn't good enough for TB3 connections and you have to use a more expensive "active" cable. Active cables have built in signal-boosting circuits -- they're amplifying and re-transmitting signals, not just passing them over the wires.
For other brands you need to check the specs carefully to see what the rated power and transmission speeds are (and take anything from a fly-by-night brand out of China with a grain of salt).
USB-C was not supposed to be a glorified power cable. It promised much, much more, and manufacturers annoyingly restricting the port choices on newer laptops made that promise even more prominent. It has failed miserably on that promise.
The real disappointment is that USB-C could unite power and data delivery so that you won’t have to think about using a different shaped input for display/power. Due to patchy support this is not possible. It is explained in the article well.
Now when I travel I use my Lenovo charger to charge my Android phones and tablet.
Unfortunately work provides me with an iPhone so that's still one more charger. One more piece of plastic floating around the ocean in the future. God damnit apple...
Like in 10 years when due to innovation we start migration to another standard...
This article feels like an engineer complaining like: "the spec is too long for me to read and is therefore bad."
My USB-C devices are the ones I need to worry about. All of the chargers I've bought (not the ones that came with devices) have at least one USB-C port, but the charger I have in my bedroom is too weak for the laptop I'm using in the family room right now, which is precisely why they stay in different rooms. And then there's the Switch, as others have mentioned. At least for the devices I own, USB-C is far more differentiated/fragmented than USB-B. The only thing that's unified is the physical connector.
ETA: I see a lot of other comments saying they don't have problems. Almost to a one, they seem to be Mac users talking about fairly static setups, and recommend "top of the line" (i.e. expensive) docks etc. I suggest that those experiences are even less representative of the typical non-HN user than my own.
Not really. Other interconnect standards have often (sadly not always) made it much harder for a small error like this to cause actual physical damage. USB-C made it easy, despite decades of learning on the subject. Yes, the fault is mostly Nintendo's, but USB-IF wasn't totally innocent either.
You don't need "Top of the Line" anything, you just need to avoid random junk. Micro-USB isn't much better in this regard. The cheaper cables charge slower and have slower data transfer rates.
The big difference here is many USB-C devices need a lot more power, so when you buy a crappy cable, it's a lot more of an issue.
However, it’s confusing AF. I feel like the first failure really is that it’s very unclear which ports and which cables support which features and how fast. You really have to know the technical differences when shopping. And you basically have to label every cable you buy, otherwise you have no idea what it’s capabilities are when you find it in your closet a year after buying it.
The other huge issue is spec compliance. It’s not clear to the average consumer whether they’re buying spec-compliant devices or non-compliant device-killers.
>Other devices, like the Nintendo Switch, only partially support the standard, and some unsupported chargers have bricked devices, reportedly due to the Switch’s maximum voltage being exceeded.
It also mentions issues with some devices/ports supporting "Power Delivery" and some not, and no way to tell them apart by just looking at them.
So, yeah, you can get lucky and everything just works, but that's not universal.
There's a really detailed post from one of the third party dock makers (genki) about all the specifics of the switch's usb-c PD implementation, including the fact that the switch uses a (nearly) bog standard usb-c pd controller chip: https://www.reddit.com/r/NintendoSwitch/comments/ckaiiv/an_e...
Just because nintendo won't warrant use of third party docks or claim compatibility doesn't mean it's not compatible. Nor does any anecdotal experience of a usb-c charger frying a switch (I've fried a dell laptop's battery with a busted usb-c cable, does that mean dells aren't conformant?).
It was such a game changer to not bend plugs/break laptops when you got the cord stuck on something.. and we gave that all up just to have one port.
Then I have lots different computers. My Macbook Air has USB-C, my MacBook Pro has USB-A, My brand new desktop PC has USB-A, my Razer laptop has both USB-A and USB-C, my Playstation has USB-A. I have USB-A SD-Card readers and USB-A hubs.
Then, when If first got the Macbook Air I ended up going through 3 different USB-C hubs until I finally figured out how to buy one that actually supported 4k-60hz (the first 2 only supported 4k-30hz). Then later, I tried to use the Razer on a USB-C monitor. It worked but at some point the keyboard and mouse were flaky. Turned out apparently I needed a Thunderbolt HUB, not a USB-C hub (plugs are the same) so now I've gone through 4 hubs.
you can read about the 4 or 5 kinds of possible USB-C hubs you might end up with if you're not careful. I have no idea how a non-techie figures this out.
https://www.bigmessowires.com/2019/05/19/explaining-4k-60hz-...
And then, I still have 3 iPhones that all use lighting (USB-A to lighting) and a few other devices at are USB-Micro (Kindle for example)
And several external hard-drives that are all that USB-3 wide plug to USB-A
I'm sure by the time USB-D arrives USB-C will be great and all my cables will be USB-C on both ends and all my devices will only have USB-C sockets but right now it's a mess
Be aware that cables of different specs of usb-c are known to burst into fire when you use them for charging or to connect devices of different specs.
* Some carry data, but won't charge things.
* Some charge, but don't carry data.
* Some charge at a higher amperage.
Once upon a time, back when we used PS-2 connectors for keyboards and mice, we had the same problem. A keyboard wouldn't work in a mouse port (although they were the same physical connector), but a mouse might work in a keyboard port.
Would it be wrong for me to say I would like to take an old PS-2 cable and strangle anyone who thinks this kind of antics are a good idea?
Old USB printer cables have a "USB-A" end that goes into your computer and the USB-B end for the printer. You can't mess that up.
I've recently handled multiple support calls from a family member due to USB-C confusion. I have to explain "This USB port is only for power, this USB port is for power and data. And don't try to try use HDMI through your USB hub because it some some strange problem. Use this other USB-C port only for your monitor".
Maybe USB C is better for a few, but it's worse for many.
Stupid manufacturers will do stupid things with any standard. Nobody should be making a laptop with one USB C port that's power only and one that's power and data.
GaN chargers are pretty cool. I found the Hyper Juice to be a shit product though. Still waiting for Anker to release some high watt chargers.
There are caveats. For example, my Nintendo Switch, a major electronics device from a major company, doesn't fully comply with the full USB-C PD spec. As a result, you can't assume any power adapter will work.
It's these caveats that are the real downfall... for those of us in the technology world, it's easy for us to be aware of them. For everyone else, it's not. There's also the whole Thunderbolt 3 & 4 using USB-C thing. I do feel bad for non-technology people trying to wrap their heads around this one.
In general, I've had good luck with USB-C. I can power my laptop and display to a 4K monitor with a single cable. It's awesome. I've also had plenty of frustrating experiences and weird USB bugs with certain hardware combinations.
Despite some of the issues, I think it's still a net positive.
I'm not sure how a regular consumer is supposed to understand this. In the past, it wasn't possible to plug a VGA cable into a PS/2 port. Now, you just have to know these hidden properties of each cable.
That's not good when cable charger combinations can damage devices.
e.g.
- USB-C
- USB-C-V (with video capabilities)
- USB-C-T3 and USB-C-T4 (with thunderbolt 3/4)
That isn't the case with USB-C.
I've had some "USB-C" cables that can charge but not transmit video, some that can transmit video but not charge, and some that can do both. It shouldn't be possible to sell a cable that can't do both and call it USB-C.
The limiting factor to my charge speed should not be a cable that has the same designation as another cable which is not a limiting factor.
There is nothing, however, stopping a manufacturer from making USB-C cables with very fine-gauge power conductors[1]: electrons could flow, and a data connection could be negotiated, but resistive losses at high power consumption would cause the voltage to sag below the minimum of 4.40V.
Such a cable would not be standards-compliant, since USB-C cables are required to be able to carry 3 Amperes at 20V. However, for pure data-transfer purposes, the cable would work fine, and be cheaper that fully-compliant cables.
[1] After all, a full-featured cable needs to fit 16 (!) conductors, and the shield, into one flexible cable.
I only have two real USB-C cables (that can do DPoUSB-C and PD, all other cables only do power and USB 2.0), both of them a really stiff, even more so than a thin DisplayPort cable.
For others they should go after the vendors for not following spec. Yes there are fakes, but companies like Nintendo could be forced to either comply or if they don't want to, use a proprietary port like they usually did.
I'm with you; as an educated techie I'm confident I can find a setup that works for my devices, but I'm far from the common denominator here. Frankly I'm a little concerned when HN thinks, "Nah this isn't a problem, USB-C is working just fine for me. None of my devices have blown up yet" says anything about whether it's a good standard.
Ensure that whatever peripherals you buy that need high speed connectivity _come_ with the USB-C cables they need. Since the cable is part of the product the manufacturer will ensure they will bundle the cheapest cable that still works for that product as advertised. This works naturally for devices like USB-C docks, USB-C monitors and hubs.
The problem with USB-C is that many people look at it as a connector _and_ transmission standard but it is not, it's only a connector standard. The transmission standards are specified separately and they are many. Depending on your application (what do you use the USB-C for) certain cables may work or not. You'd have to do the research to determine which signal do you need to transport over that USB-C cable: is it PD power (up to what wattage/amperage), is it USB2 (how many devices), is it DisplayPort or is it Thunderbolt3. Then buy a cable that advertises support for the signal you need.
Alternatively, buy a cable that advertises support for the highest bitrate of all those transmission types, essentially buy a cable that advertises Thunderbolt3 support, but in that case don't be surprised why almost all TB3 cables are very short, it's not easy to transport 40Gbit/sec reliably. There are longer, but active and a lot more expensive, TB3 cables.
This is the whole point. Why do we now expect a layperson to "do the research" before they can charge their headphones?
God, I wish.
But half the thunderbolt cables don't support USB!
Crossing my fingers for that godawful decision to be fixed with USB4.
Get the cable in a brick and mortar shop, rather than buying on Amazon.
Preferably a normal shop, not the cheapest wallmart or dollar store.
I have the contrary impression: understanding the "caveat" implies strong distrust for the experts who know that "maybe it works" means "assume it doesn't work", while a blissfully unaware consumer could get lucky and never know that USB-C is actually fragmented and difficult to use.
Which, these days, is more or less everything you're likely to pull up on an Amazon search.
Cheap Chinese manufacturing has been amazing for providing the hobbyist with low cost electronics components but a nightmare for consumers that can often end up with something sub-par.
(Yes, I know it's been firmware fixed.)
Honestly, you'll find those "for me it's SUPER stressful"-cases everywhere, but it will not touch 99.99% of the other people.
Even if you don’t write drivers, doesn’t mean you can’t suffer from difficult to implement standards.
I love that USB-C trivially expanded my laptop to having two DisplayPort devices so I can run 3 4K screens at 60hz
I expected what you said, got something else altogether.
I've been all-in on USB-C for a while now, and I just finally got to use a friend's monitor with that feature set the other day. It was so awesome! I expected to have to plug a keyboard and mouse in, etc., but I just sat down and plugged in the USB-C cable to my MBP and everything just worked.
- initially OSX had a bug with my 2018 Vega20 MBP and I couldn't even use the monitor it would keep glitching out - I had to switch to beta channel to get it working - I cannot get DP 1.4 to work properly - I can either have half resolution with HDR on DP 1.4 or I can switch monitor to DP 1.2 and get full 5k without HDR
- I cannot use the monitor with my wife's Lenovo laptop for charging and 5k display - if I try to do both it constantly resets the display - I'm assuming it draws too much power, when I plug a separate power adapter it works fine
- I am not sure if this monitor would work with an AMD laptop that has USB 3.2 as LG only advertises thunderbolt support but theoretically DisplayPort Alternate Mode should work. Also have no clue if it would charge or if the USB hub functionality would work
Overall this was a pretty unsatisfying experience for a 2000$ device.
Anyway one day I was like, huh, I bet this won't work, but I plugged my Mac adapter into my Oneplus phone, with the USB A headset attached. The phone actually detected the headset, including the volume up/down button built in.
So yes, USB-C simplified my life.
Maybe it's just luck? Maybe it's because I generally avoid the cheapest items on Amazon? I've been swapping cables and adapters around for 3+ years now with no issues.
I'm starting to be convinced the port is fundamentally flawed, dongles with multiple ports are never reliable enough to keep a drive mounted for any heavy work, HDMI glitches out. Doesn't matter what dongle I try they all have some sort of thing wrong with them.
The only dongle that works reliably enough to do light video editing with a drive is the $20 Apple single USB-C to A adapter, which converts one of your single USB-C ports to a single USB-A port.
The fact that Apple hasn't released a usb-c hub speaks volumes, lets be honest they could charge $500 for it and people would still defend and buy it. But I feel the reason they haven't it because the technology fundamentally doesn't deliver on this promise and it would be just as unreliable as the 3rd party ones.
I think the real problem is we get a lot of cheap products coming from China with very little quality control. QC is poor because they have no incentive to build in quality. E.g. you likely don't realize how flaky the dongle is until after the 30 day return policy, the branding on many of these plugs is minimal so you don't even know which company to avoid for your next purchase.
I had bought a "top reviewed" HDMI / USBC cable on Amazon. It seemed to have issues overheating and dying. Bought the Insignia version of the same from BestBuy and it works like a champ (even when it's 100f outside and my house has no AC).
It's not about where you buy it, but the quality matters.
It was an eye opening experience when I left the 1 star review, the vendor keeps pinging me with bribe offers to take it down. So when you see even a little bump of 1 star reviews, you have to know that those are the people who have some integrity and there likely is a proportion missing.
There are companies making good products, but you have to be willing to pay for them and you have to buy them directly from that company usually. Even if you find that product on Amazon, due to SKU commingling you can assume most of the inventory is counterfeit.
Too many people go to Amazon, type some generic keywords in, and pick "Amazon's Choice", which is some "brand" off AliExpress with no QC. It's not just electronics, this is true for things like car parts and tools as well. It's somewhat shocking how much Chinesium-grade products have infected every aspect of American life due to the ubiquity of people buying through Amazon and Amazon's complete lack of inventory QC.
Friends are amazed that so much of my stuff works, and it seems the only way people find out about good stuff now is via word of mouth because you can't trust online review sites which are mostly just reformatting Amazon star rankings with affiliate links. The state of ecommerce in 2020 is appalling.
I remember several years ago purchasing the $70 digital adapter from Apple. It's the one with 3 ports and merges into one. I forget which version it was.
It was horrible. The HDMI port wouldn't work.
I had purchased two. They were absolute trash. That's $140.
I replaced them with two Amazon versions for half the cost. They worked.
It was only after I purchased that I noticed that the reviews on Apple's own website showed it rated under 2-stars, with lots of angry reviews from people having the same exact problem.
I will say Belkin's USB-C dock works amazingly well. I love it.
The point is that you don't know what you get on Amazon these days. It could be that you get a working version and I get a counterfeit version even though we both buy the same article on Amazon as they are just all in the same storage box.
I had two of them (they sent me a second because I was having problems). If you plugged the dongle into the wall but not a laptop, it would send the wrong voltage to the USB ports. I mostly keep it around to flash SD cards.
P: "I rolled a 6, and it worked fine for me. I don't know why everyone else is having problems."
Except that the monitor only supports DisplayPort 1.2. 4k60 requires a bandwidth of 12.54 Gbit/s. DP 1.2 consists of four data lanes, each providing 4.32 GBit/s, so my monitor requires four full lanes. DP 1.3 and up provide at least 7.48 Gbit/s, so 4k60 would only require two lanes for that.
USB C consists of 4 data lanes. When using the DisplayPort alternate mode, it can assign either 1, 2, or 4 data lanes to DP. The other lanes can be used for USB. In addition to that, it also offers a single USB 2.0 lane.
If a dock - even an expensive one - supports a resolution of 4k60 via DP and provides USB 3 ports, will it actually work for me? It could use DP 1.2 by assigning four data links to DP , but that means USB gets downgraded to 2.0 and I don't think any hub actually supports this. It could use DP 1.3+ and assign two data links to DP and two to USB, but if it outputs that same DP signal, it won't provide the bandwidth my monitor needs so it must actively convert two-link DP 1.3 to four-link DP 1.2. Again, I don't think any hub actually supports this.
The hardware I need can definitely exist. It's a pretty normal thing to ask for. A lot of docks, even the expensive ones, will claim to support what I need, but as far as I can tell not a single dock actually can. Because USB C has so many protocol options, figuring out what is supported has become nearly impossible.
They use a Thunderbolt hub (CalDigit TS3 Plus) to a Thunderbolt GPU box. (Razer core X) A single cable goes to the hub, GPU box and all your USB peripherals plug into the hub. The hub itself claims it can run a DP 1.2 monitor, so you could skip the GPU box, if you don't need graphics performance.
I am currently waiting for thunderbolt 4 support to upgrade my other monitor, so can have a hub in there somewhere instead of some devices plugged into each monitor.
I mean if you can suggest one that actually does that I’ll get right on pestering my work for one. But considering the fact they bought the basically useless base model MacBook “pro” I don’t fancy my chances.
My selection is the same price, and instead of being near the top of the pack, it's near the bottom. Might have something to do with Apple's re-entry into the market at such a high price point.
As I said don’t you think it’s strange that if this product supposedly works perfectly then why isn’t Apple shipping one with a premium price tag.
I have a few CalDigit Thunderbolt 3 hubs. They're great. 4k monitor, gigabit ethernet, a number of USB-3 devices, and power-delivery for my Macbook. They are decidedly not cheap, but I wasted a lot of money on plain USB-C hubs (not Thuderbolt 3 which uses the same port but is not the same) that are now effectively trash.
I've got one at all of the "workstations" in the house. Tired of working in the bedroom? Unplug one cable and move to the office that has an identical setup and everything works and is easy.
I have a Dell XPS with a dock. There's only one USB-C connection between my laptop and the dock which provides power, screen and usb ports. It's pretty nice to come into the office and plug only one cable in (back in the pre-pandemic days)
Not sure about whats best for Mac though, and Linux... I love linux systems but my experience with linux laptops has not been the best.
It does. I have a Macbook Pro that connects to two screens, a keyboard, mouse and ethernet via a single USB-C/Thunderbolt 3 cable. The fact that not all USB-C cables are Thunderbolt 3 cables is annoying, but at least they label them pretty clearly.
Since the only place I “dock up” is at home it’s been a perfect solution. This right here is where USB-C should be heading, not annoying docks you need to lug around.
They are all very pricey though.
Sometimes even my Apple keyboard won't work connected to the dongle, I have to put in and out a few times for it to work.
Things that never happened with old USB cables.
I finally bought a CalDigit TS3 Plus. It was way more than I had hoped to have to spend on a hub, but it has worked without issue for over a year now.
From the hub (read: 1 TB3 cable plugged into my MBP) I get:
* Gigabit ethernet * PD to my laptop * 1 DisplayPort (which I use to drive 1 monitor) * Digital Optical (I don't use it) * 1 TB3 port (which I use to drive the other monitor with a TB3->DP cable) * 1 USB-C 10Gbps port * 1 USB-C 5Gbps port * 5 USB3 5Gbps ports (old square style) * SD card reader * Headphones/Mic output/input
It is wonderful to plug in 1 cable and get my power for my laptop, internet, monitors, webcam, wired mouse/keyboard, Lightning cable for iOS development, Micro-usb for Android development, external SSD for CCC backups, and label printer (and probably something else I'm forgetting). I just want to reiterate, all of that from ONE cable. It's pretty amazing.
This is, by far, the best setup I've ever had and I have never had a problem with it in the 2+ years that I've been using it. I picked mine up for $299.99 and it's worth every penny. I see it's $250 on Amazon right now and if this thing died today I would (after a tiny bit of research) re-buy it immediately.
Here is the product page: https://www.caldigit.com/ts3-plus/
I keep this hub[0] in my laptop bag for traveling and I haven't had any issues with it in over two years, either. I've plug in monitors, daisy chained USB-C, plugged in my iPad as a second monitor, and projected over HDMI numerous times.
And I have this[1] monitor for traveling.
[0]: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B074DRW84M/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b... [1]: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B06Y8SSQG5/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b...
There are at least 5 ways to transfer video over USB C: Straight USB, HDMI alternate mode, DisplayPort alternate mode, MHL alternate mode, and Thunderbolt. Then it's also possible for an alternate mode to only use a subset of the available lanes, the lane count doesn't match the lanes available in the "real" connector, and the protocols have multiple versions.
Labeling all of that as "USB C" is a massive mistake.
https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/71F1sWVVXAL...
If the monitor has a Triangle port, and the computer has a Square port, you need a Triangle-to-Square adapter. Simple.
It also isn't correct. It wasn't true as far as VGA and DVI adapters were concerned. Nor is it true for connecting two HDMI-In ports, for example.
And yeah, the HDMI thing is of course true, I'll give you that. :-)
But yeah, you're right of course - I'm being pedantic. Yet it still worries me that those are all officially supported as part of the USB C standards. It's confusing even when everyone is following the standards, and it gets even worse when vendors start ignoring them. It's definitely not making it any easier.
I have expressly found this to not be true. I have a bluetooth headset that has a USB-C plug, but it only charges from a USB-A to USB-C cord. It also won't connect to a computer using a straight USB-C cord, but it will with a USB-C to USB-A adapter and a USB-A to USB-C cord.
The Switch won't always charge from every adapter (and some folks have reported damage from trying to use a generic adapter).
I tried to use an Apple USB-C charger with a Lenovo chromebook, and the chromebook would flash as if you were plugging and unplugging the computer every second.
I have a USB-C dock (Anker brand) for my work computer, and it works (mostly) but the power is so noisy that I have to use a separate port with a USB-C to USB-A for my USB headset.
So, yeah, USB-C is a real shitshow at my house.
It was easy for her to set up her computer back when we had color-coded and large, distinctively-shaped ports. For example: PS/2 for keyboard and mouse (violet and green), VGA for monitor (blue), 3.5mm audio for speakers and microphone (green and pink), C13/14 for power. Obviously, usability is way better these days; she can use her laptop without plugging in anything, and mostly things Just Work. However, I think these basic child's-toy-like usability cues were valuable, and maybe we need something similar to keep USB C easily-understandable.
One day I hope that it will all be sorted out. Every USB cable and adapter will have full support. You can plug any USB C into any USB C and it will work like magic.
(1) Your external device is <whatever class of device> and it requests power at 12V, minimum 15W, up to 40W, and it requests data at up to 100Mbps down/5Mbps up
(2) Your cable promises to accept power at up to 25W, and data at up to 40Mbps bidirectional
(3) I can offer power up to 60W, and data up to 500M/100M
And, this is what we have negotiated (and what appears to be working):
Data: 40M/5Mbps and Power: 12V/25W from host
* *
Is that feasible? It would be nice.
I don't agree USB-C is a 'total mess' (the physical interface is quite good), but it is a sad disappointment. I hope it will get better.
There would still be surprises when you plug in the wrong kind of cable, unfortunately, even if the device is honestly described
Data doesn't make sense since USB2 is USB2, there's no context on how 'fast' it is (besides USB high speed vs. standard speed). USB3/Thunderbolt/etc is more complicated, but that's also a tricky behavior.
In principle, I agree that it would be nice if there was a unified software that could tell you what is negotiated and what an upstream device is 'looking for'. I imagine we might eventually get there... maybe... kinda depends on hardware vendors to enable that though.
My pet peeve is nomenclature of USB versions: 3.2 Gen 1, Gen 2, 2x2, USB 4 Gen {2,3}x(1,2}.
USB-C has simplified my life a great deal compared to all the others. It's not perfect, but the gains have been very significant compared to the past.
VBUS and GND provide 5 V up to 900 mA, in accordance with the USB 3.1 specification. A specific USB-C mode may also be entered, where 5 V at either 1.5 A or 3 A is provided.[55] A third alternative is to establish a Power Delivery contract.
I get the desire to make the spec flexible so it can be simple/cheap when the extra speed & juice isn't needed, but it is really a confusing mess, and not helpful to consumers who just think "Oh it has a USB-C port. That'll work then".
I believe USB 4 was created to try to reduce this fragmentation and confusion, but not much in the way of implementation yet. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USB4)
I bought a Logitech C920 webcam the other day (the most pouplar model)... and it's still only available in USB-A. If you want a Logitech webcam with USB-C, you've got to pay over twice as much for a model like their StreamCam.
I'm happy to use dongles for HDMI or Ethernet when I have to. But the fact that I still have to use dongles with brand-new devices that are still only made in USB-A seems ridiculous. At this rate, I don't see how we're ever going to move on.
That's because it is still the most common type of port out there and it doesn't require a huge bandwidth that USB-C provides. If anything it would be overkill and over priced for what you get.
I think logitech is waiting for USB-C to become more prevalent and the cost to manufacture to drop.
You would not want to 'waste' a high-speed port for a webcam.
That might be true, but then it's a massive failure. The entire point of USB-C is for the whole computing ecosystem to migrate. If that's prohibitively expensive for a common webcam, then it's an utter design failure.
But I have a hard time believig it actually is true, since I can also find a bunch of cheap USB-C stuff on Amazon as well. So I hope it's not true, at least.
Yes, if you already have a working design that uses USB-A and you don't want to mess around with the manufacturing process.
Also three are a log of people out there with no USB-C ports on their machine or existing USB-C chargers so you end up needing to provide at least an A->C adaptor (OK, these aren't expensive, but it costs >$0 to include one) or if your device charges too slowly off non-PD ports then you need to provide a wall-wart where you otherwise might get away with being cheap and not.
Furthermore, I know some people who are actively avoiding USB-C (seems odd, but true) as they already have a pile of devices/wallwarts/batteries/cables that are based on the older connectors.
The list of peripherals not broadly (if at all) available in USB-C is nuts.
Spolsky on Martian headsets: https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2008/03/17/martian-headsets/
It turns out that making power/data cables work without irritating the hell out humanity as a whole is a task that humans are uniquely unsuited to solving. We'll have to wait for AI or aliens to fix this.
Meanwhile, stop expecting the next standard to work as a standard. Buy a nice little bag for housing your cables, dongles, adapters and such. Keep it stocked. Remember to throw out defunct ones biannually.
The problem is not going away.
He was one of us. Believed problems like these could be solved. It turned out that the problem of having to own a collection of dongly things cannot be solved. It turns out that they are intrinsic to human nature.
It also doesn't mention the issues we see in USB-A to USB-C cables, where cheaper cables often 'forget' the pullup resistor required to prevent device damage[0].
[0]: https://www.howtogeek.com/240777/watch-out-how-to-buy-a-usb-... - Does anyone know if this is still an issue? I haven't heard anything further in a couple years but I would assume it still rings true.
This means that when I plug a cable into the USB-C port on the MacBookPro, I can't get any info about what kind of cable it is. I can't get "this cable is for power only" information.
And there is no standard for markings on cables and power supplies that tell this.
There are some misc technical issues but as more and more devices only use USB-C things are getting simpler and simpler for me.
Without a formal docking station both my laptops dock with a single USB-C, video, power, keyboard and mouse and all (FINALLY!).
All my USB-C devices charge at a reasonable (even if not consistent) rate, all of them can take any of my batteries I can carry with a single cable.
However it takes some research, and I wish the spec was pared down more. Others mentioned that Nintendo switch can be damaged by a bad charger. They also chose to implement HDMI out using displayport converted to HDMI, so very few HDMI adapters are compatible.
Thunderbolt vs USB is confusing.
Hubs are confusing. USB-C hubs are basically impossible. USB2 or 3 hubs work well but share the speed and power with multiple devices. Easy to understand. USB-C (3.2) can supply up to 100W and 20Gbps. But one device can use up to 100W, and one 4k@60fps HDMI signal can use up to 20Gbps (even more in fact). So it's not possible to make a usb-c hub without a lot of limitations. Not to mention it's not trivial to set each device as a power sink or source. That's why hubs generally have usb-c on one side and usb-a 2.0 or 3.1 on the other side.
I don't know what the solution could be, you can't keep the versatility without removing functionality.
We went from a situation where no plug fits but if it does it works to a situation where every plug fits but none of them works.
All USB-C cables appear identical but can be different. For example:
- Does it carry power? If so, how much power?
- Will it charge my device? Not all USB-C chargers charge all USB-C devices.
- Does this cable carry data? If so, what speed?
- Does it carry a Thunderbolt 3 signal?
On Macbooks we lost utility when we lost Magsafe but "gained" the ability to plug power into any of the 2/4 ports. Frankly I'd rather have Magsafe. I'm sure that every port supporting power must increase cost. It has issues too as using ports on one side can lead to overheating, for example.
And of course no cable can really do everything. The only cables that can are necessarily short (<0.5m) and expensive. I know. I use them for my Thunderbolt dock to my MBP.
Where before I had the right ports on my MBP. Now? It's almost unusable without a dock or adapter. It's so dumb.
And for anyone complaining about needing different chargers for your phone and laptop, how is that any worse than before? You needed to do the same before USB-C. Now at least you have the option to plug your phone into your laptop charger. (Though if your complaint about USB-C for laptop charging is in regards to fragility, then I agree. I'm afraid I'm going to break them. Never had that thought about a barrel plug)
- All the same problems: not all USB micro are created equal, some are supposed to be used at different voltages
- But some cables for peripherals didn't use micro they used normal USB, which was hard to put in because you always got which way was up mixed up, that's gone now :)
- What's worse, all the USB micro cables eventually bent because they were so flimsy. 6 months shelf life, maximum.
- And they weren't symmetrical either
So now we have a cable that's symmetrical, that you can use for peripherals and power. Yes, different power cables disguised as the same is still a problem, but this is a step in the right direction if you ask me.
The only thing I don't like is that now peripherals are smaller and easier to get unplugged, like my HDMI to USB-C that I'm using right now for one of my monitors.
That's my hot take: USB-C is just Millennial DB-9.
Think of the nutrition labels on food packaging, instead showing what the device does and does not support, something like this:
Power Delivery——–30w max
Thunderbolt————No support
Bandwidth————–800Mbps max
Video———————4k / 30 fps
:)
And we could fold the thunderbolt/bandwidth/video into one single speed rating without much trouble, if the desire was there...
https://i.stack.imgur.com/W8UGp.jpg
Once you hit the soft cap of 3 amps, you're supposed to increase the voltage. The 3-5 amp range is only supposed to be used at 20 volts.
https://megous.com/dl/tmp/a4111a84934c8c8f.png
https://megous.com/dl/tmp/1eccbf102295a676.pngIt's not like you go directly to 20, you go one step at a time.
> Sources can support more and it's not against the spec, as long as you detect the 5A cable.
They can but how many do? If you want to play nice you shouldn't require that for your device.
Deciding what is a must have is the more tricky part. I personally think power is a must have. I think every charger and every cable should be able to charge every device. I think having a USB C charger, cable, and device, that it should not even be possible to plug it in and have it not charge because one of those three things does not support the other two.
Chargers lists Voltage, Current and Power.
Using a specific Cable for their own purpose "is" intuitive for vast majority users. Choosing the right USB-C cable is not.
I’m trying to find a longer cable for my MacBook. Right now the 2m cable that came with it is too short. So I started looking. I couldn’t find one that was at least 3m long from Apple and I couldn’t understand why. I had to look on Amazon and only these cheaper manufacturers made them. Except they are fully USB C, they are USB C 2.0 to USB C 3.0 or some nonsense like this. My friend went ahead and bought that and then it turned out that cable didn’t work for one of his laptops.
Then he also wanted a USB C cable for his new external hard drive but in order to support it, it has a max length of 1m. If he chose a cable longer than that it would silently be slower.
I previously ran into this issue last year with a usb c to usb 2 cable I had. It wouldn’t charge my Switch properly and I didn’t understand why until I read up on how the Switch needed a certain type of USB C cable and the cheaper cables weren’t compatible.
The entire thing is a mess. There are some advantages definitely. My family has different laptops but they all support usb c, so now we only need to bring 1 charger on trips (when we eventually get to go on trips). The USB charger will also charge the Switch. That is a huge convenience. If you have top notch charger like the MacBook charger and top notch cables then it will probably work. But the operative word is “probably” and when it does it’s a huge hassle.
And anyway, compare this to before USB-C. "My MacBook's magsafe cable isn't long enough, can I get a longer one?"
No, it's soldered to the power brick, comes in only one length, costs $80 to replace the whole thing if the cable frays, and no reputable 3rd party options exist because it was Apple's special sauce patented power connector.
I'll take USB-C over that.
I bought the original USB-C-only Macbook and I loved it. Now I have a Macbook Pro at home and another Macbook Pro at work, four Thunderbolt ports on each.
I think the big problem is the fact that it's still very implementation dependent and, as the author said, it's easy to get peripherals (particularly power-related) that don't do what you expected them to do. Then again, I have the same problem with USB1&2. How many times have you bought a cable and found that it only carries power, not data, because it only has two wires inside? That has happened to me dozens of times over the past decade. Still happens today. But when you get peripherals that work, USB-C and Thunderbolt3 are terrific. I don't use and peripherals at home. I have a dock on my desk at work that gives me gigabit ethernet, external keyboard and mouse, external hard drive, two displays, power, and headphones all through one Thunderbolt cable that takes one second to plug or unplug. It's terrific.
I remember old men ranting when the iMac didn't have a floppy drive, how it needed more serial ports, parallel ports, and fewer USB ports because no one uses USB, it's too expensive and it's never going to be practical. Those arguments didn't age well. USB-C is rolling out more slowly than previous options, but it is rolling out and it's terrific.
USB-C data is a clusterf*k, and worse of all, is not UNIVERSAL anymore.
Is it? I guess it's nice that I can charge my phone with my laptop charger, but it has the same issue as usb-c data where everything physically fits but are incompatible. eg. having to worry about whether a aftermarket charger provides enough voltage/current to charge your laptop.
Is yours a recent model? AFAIK most laptops can't charge using phone chargers. They require high voltage that isn't available on low wattage chargers.
There's a lot more flexibility than there was prior to USB-C.
As far as charger spec goes, I am very happy. There are adapters that can supply multiple voltages, practically powering all my mobile devices. For all the other devices that come with barrel jacks, I made my own module to convert them to USB-C [1].
I have 2 docks at home and have gone through 2 at work that cost as much as $300-400 (OWC and similar) and it's just flaky no matter what.
How do you blame the adapters, docks, whatever when some of them cost as much as a chromebook or a cheap windows laptop? All these dongles and adapters used to not even be required, something's really wrong when they cost as much as another machine and you still can't get things working as well as they worked in the past. Realistically I had less trouble docking my Windows laptop in the late 90s than I do with this MBP. That would have been with 1 monitor instead of 2 but otherwise all the same peripherals.
The only other USB-C device we have is a switch.. we've never tried to use it with anything but the nintendo chargers/devices so I guess we've just been lucky.
* USB-C PD: For charging/PSUs
* TB 3: TB stuff (displays/network/GPUs/etc)
* USB 3.2 data: other data stuffI recently bought a small USB-C hub that allowed you to connect to it with your own cable, and it has an HDMI port. I also decided to buy a longer, but cheaper USB-C cable to connect it to my machine, thinking it would work. Well the HDMI port wouldn't work at all. Everything else was fine. I actually ordered a replacement because I thought the hub was defective.
Come to find out, it will only work with USB-C cables with e-marker that allows a higher data rate. This info wasn't clearly stated anywhere, it was only listed deep in a support post. So that was a fun discovery...
It doesn't make economic sense for every cable with the same connector to support the same power or data rates. Sometimes you just need a phone charging cable, sometimes you want to charge and drive a laptop at over 100w, and sometimes you need to carry 4k60hz hdr video over 10ft which is pretty dang hard.
The end nodes vary in capability, but it's nice I don't have to fish out my crescent-ended connector to differentiate from my flat-ended connector because I needed a higher transfer rate.
One stack of USB-C cables lets me connect all my devices together. Whether they make sense connected together is up to me.
No one ever said USBC was going to bring these features to cheap $5 cables you buy in the checkout at the corner bodega.
The cables should be marked, if they are not marked with their capability then buy them from another vendor that does mark them.
It's no different than ethernet cables, they all look the same, they could be cat5, cat5e, cat6, etc.
The only two cables I own that can plug into my laptop connect it to:
1) the charger that came with it and
2) the aforementioned dongle
That's it. And no, I'm not going to drop a bunch of cash upgrading monitors, phone cables, keyboards, and mice to get rid of the dongle. Especially when the "USB-C compatible" ones all cost twice as much.
1) You have to select them (not an easy task when trying to make sure it has all the compatible ports and power requirements)
2) Increases the number of things you can forget to bring that can make your laptop unusable/less useable
3) They detract from the clean Apple aesthetic
4) They increase the cost of your setup, sometimes significantly if you want to match the Apple quality. MacBooks certainly didn't get cheaper when they switched to USB-C only.
I did not have any dongles before Apple moved to USB-C, so I didn't have to deal with any of the above. Also, none of these things needed to happen! Apple could have done what they usually do - gradually transition. Add 1-2 USB-C and then only eliminate the other ports when most folks could do without.
EDIT: One more thing to add - this "transition period" is probably going to last 10+ years for me because I bought a $350 Kinesis Advantage keyboard with a USB Type A connector. It's a solid keyboard that I expect will live at least 10 years.
Reasonable way how to handle transition period is to have computers with both USB-A and USB-C sockets, not just USB-C sockets and dongles.
Sadly it seems there is a march to making cables even more expensive to duck tape on more solutions.
* charge the laptop
* drive 2 1440p @ 60 monitors
* connect 6 USB2 peripherals
* have 1Gbit wired ethernet connection to my router (for low latency and stable connectivity for all that remote desktop work)
One of the monitors connects over USB-C to the dock and that carries video signal and USB upstream so I could plug even more USB-A devices in the monitor if I wanted to. Imagine how many cables and what a mess would be to get this many peripherals connected to a laptop without TB3, now I just plug one cable to the laptop, very impressive.
USB-C has really simplified a lot of things: - Which way do I plug in? Any way. - Can I charge my new Ultrabook laptop with the same cable as my phone? Most certainly. - Is the port easy to recognize? Yes, just give it a quick look - Forget the Micro USB from now on? Yes
I'd say we're still at 70% along the transition, but compared to other solutions the C is way better and more convenient.
But with older machines/monitors, I need a pile of adapters. Still, I like it-for the most part.
The worst thing about USB-C is the dock situation for laptops. None of them are perfect, and most of them are garbage. $200-300 is a bit hard to swallow when I've been buying Lenovo docks for $50 for the longest time, but today's laptops don't have the docking port on the bottom.
My work laptop is a Dell and their USB-C dock seems to work just fine (at least for me).
For instance, take the fact that USB 3 and USB 3.1 Gen 1 are functionally equivalent and Gen 2 support (which brings with it the only actual improvements in USB 3.1) is an optional part of the USB 3.1 standard. The functional impact of this arrangement is that manufacturers could take USB 3.0 products, slap a 'USB 3.1' label on them, and market them as New and Improved for only the cost of new markings and marketing material.
Nice money if you can get it.
USB-C is even worse because every feature that end users actually want is optional and, in some cases (such as DP alternate mode lane support), isn't even listed in the fine print. Customers who don't have the awareness to spend many hours doing detailed research will very easily find themselves stuck in an expensive game of trial and error to buy USB-C devices that will actually work together.
Nice money if you can get it.
Like most modern tech products, the entire USB ecosystem reeks of the distinct smell of extractive scam.
When you build a PC, generally parts and cables only fit in places that they will function. When plugging devices into a computer, historically if you plug them in where they fit, it works.
USB-C's decision to buck this behavior made it more confusing for users, not less.
Q2: can it also do this for speed? (I'm not sure if there is a speed negotiation like there is for power, and even if there is I'm not sure if it would depend on the use--e.g., maybe a particular port supports a different maximum speed for network devices than it does for mass storage devices)
Q3: Can a similar thing be done for cables? A box you plug both ends of a cable into, and it tells you how much power you can put over the cable, and how fast it can go?
Q4: could these things be made small enough and cheap enough that it would be reasonable to expect nearly everyone to get them?
The above devices, plus readily available USB-C one to many hubs [1], would fix most problems people have with USB-C.
[1] Most USB-C hubs connect one USB-C port on your computer to many non-USB-C ports. Most that do have a USB-C port on the other side only have one (and sometimes that one is power only, not data).
They've also removed the headphone jack from iPhone; however, the USB-C is still nowhere to be found. Why?!
The end result is that we can charge a MacBook with a ThinkPad power adapter, but no longer have MagSafe; have been using ugly adapters on MacBooks for close to 5 years now -- with no end in sight, yet still cannot use the same headset for both a MacBook and an iPhone.
Ironically, from this perspective, Android is now more compatible with a MacBook than an iPhone is -- my USB-A headphones with the USB-A-to-USB-C adapter can be plugged directly into either my Android or my MacBook, without any extra adapters, other than the permanently-attached USB-A-to-USB-C one. (Of course, the opposite isn't true -- and the USB-C adapter for the headsets from my phone doesn't work in a MacBook, but at least the opposite way everything works.)
On the other hand I was incredibly meticulous about vetting this hub before I purchased it because I know the positive experience is not universal.
Is this a PD cable? Is this Thunderbolt 3? Is this DisplayPort-over-USB? Is this cable too long to be fast? Oh, this cable doesn't work for power. Oh that's actually not a power-equipped USB-C slot. Does this hub work? Oh, it only works for ports, not video. Etc etc etc.
I've literally taken to color-coding cables to know which ones I can use where, and if I just stuck to macs and high-end cables, sure, fine, but I have about 10 other devices that have "things" that plug into USB-C slots, but what those things can do and what they need to do them...
It's not helpful that Amazon has become a sludge of crappy products with fake reviews. Even I've ended up lulled in a few times and picked up something that just didn't work as specified at all.
Lots of decent brands out there who make cables that do what they say they will do: Belkin, Monoprice, Anker, etc.
Another tip I got which is worth it's weight in cable in this case: If you need both USB-C and Thunderbolt cables, get different colors of cable and be consistent about it. I know a guy who buys all his cables in specific colors (even when the adaptor is different) so he can reach into his gear bag and get the right thing every time.
And in general, dust or no dust, it feels like a flimsy plug. Even the shorter micro USB typically snapped vigorously at their ports.
I think these physical design flaws are also quite an oversight for something that wants to be the plug-to-end-all-plugs.
https://www.pocket-lint.com/laptops/news/intel/147329-usb-4-...
>> The USB 4 specification was published in late 2019 and will probably appear in devices in late 2020 or early 2021 - it usually takes around 18 months for devices to come to market once a new standard is published for the first time.
And FYI, I hear it is to be called "USB4", not "USB 4". Why? Because reasons.
Both of those seem like much worse options than the current way of doing things
I didn't throw out my USB 3 flash drives when USB 3.1 came out.
There's no compatibility problem here that would make you change anything at all, just ignore it.
People need connectivity today, not some arbitrary time in the future. If you don't need the performance of USB 3/4, then why don't you just continue using your USB 2 equipment that still works perfectly fine?
You seem to be implying that eliminating backwards compatibility from USB would make things easier for you, but it sounds like it would actually just make things harder for you.
However, my experience with USB-C is way better. I use the same charger for my laptop, pad and phone. I even use the same screen (with integrated docking station) for both my laptop and my phone (yay Samsung DeX), both at work and at home. This would have been impossible / unimaginable half-a-decade ago. (Anyone remember the "Lenovo-type" docking station vs. the "Dell-type" docking station?)
I agree that USB-C still has challenges to overcome, but I find the direction so-far to be the right one.
1) have device
2) have charger
3) plug device into charger
4) does it charge?
5) if no, write on charger "sucks" and get another charger
If one is worried about buying the wrong charger, here's a hint: people review these things on online stores, and cheaper is worse.
Recently I bought a new laptop and it doesn't charge with it, or any other USB cable in my place, except the one it came with, which is too short, and only ends in USB-C so I can't use it with any other power adapter I own. I don't know why it doesn't charge with any other cable.
If not even Benson Leung's recommended cable works, what then?
This is the frustration. All USB-C cables should have some bare minimum features that all of them supply, and be clearer about which ones have which features. Labeling it all the same USB-C leads to the frustration so many people are talking about.
The device itself is everything I expected it to be, and I can still charge it with the included cable. The only issue is that it only charges with the provided cable and nothing else I've tried so far. I don't think this justifies invoking my warranty on it. It isn't a deal breaker, I've paid enough for it and I'm already starting to use it daily. But there seems to have been no way to know it was "broken" in this specific manner, maybe because nobody really felt the need to test with a different cable in their reviews. They probably just declared, "hey, it charges, so no problems there."
If you plug the lamp into the gas hose plug, it just won't turn on.
Is it perfect? No.
Is it better? Yes.
Sadly, on my expensive as hell, powerful work supplied macbook pro, I need to plug three different USB-C dongles in to get multiple monitors, and I have to plug the USB keyboard and USB mouse into separate dongles, and power into a third. Why? I don't know. It's just the only way it works.
And not all PD-capable cables support every range or combination of voltages and wattages.
Same could be done with the connectors on the device you want to put them in. But I guess at least Apple wouldn't adopt them and simply support everything on every port and cable they sell, making their devices and cables more expensive but easier for customers.
And it automatically detects the graphics card when I plug it in and identifies it with no hassle.
Unbelievable.
Now with USB-C I'm reading some reports about problem but so far it's been good. I'm still optimistic that eventually all devices with USB C ports will support the full feature set on every port (nowadays that seems to be Thunderbolt 4, Displayport Alt etc). But that's just me being optimistic :-)
I hope we can skip usb-c and get the next thing right.
Sure, it's not perfect, but for most of the use cases it "just works", and I honestly believe it solves more problems than it creates even with its flaws.
Mostly when it comes to the different voltages they can be set to provide.
Here's a video I saw recently which explains all about USB-C 'PD' (Power Delivery): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iumAnPiQSj8
Power rating is a mess, and manufacturers are all trying to mislead the consumer as much as they can about it, so I agree, it's a mess if you don't research it thoroughly.
But I do research it, and my life is much better with it.
1. Charging is like 90% of what I use cables for, and I can just have the same cable for everything
2. USB-C displays are fantastic, one cable to my MacBook that handles charging, display output, USB-A ports etc
3. The only time I ever use USB-C ports for anything other than charging is from my MacBook, and so far every adapter/display etc has just worked
If I plug my phone to my laptop when the latter is on battery power it's basically a coin toss which will be charging which.
It's not noticeably more durable than micro USB. The jump isn't as great as from e.g. Mini USB, which was a nightmare in this regard.
I have yet to figure out why this is the case, but it's supremely frustrating when a reversible cable is not in fact reversible.
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:USB_Type-C_plug_pino... (Note the empty pair of pins on the bottom-center, right below "D-" and "D+".)
USB-C receptacles have the two locations this pair could end up in cross-wired, so that an electrical connection is made whether the cable is plugged in with the data pair on the top side or on the bottom.
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:USB_Type-C_Receptacl... (Note how "D-" and "D+" are mirrored top-center and bottom-center.)
This is more complicated than previous versions of USB, where there was exactly one pin that could be connected to D+ and one that could be connected to D-. If a manufacturer designed a USB-C device like this, with only one of two possible data pairs connected, then the cable will only work when plugged in "data-conductor side up". When plugged in "data-conductor side down", the D+ and D- conductors will be in unconnected pins in the receptable, and the unconnected pins in the cable will be in the receptacle's connected pins.
If this is actually what happened in your car, and you're the adventurous sort, you could possibly fix this by soldering two "bodge wires" to your minivan's USB port, one shorting the two D+ pins together, and the other shorting the two D- pins together.
How is any normal person gonna buy 3/8” shrink wrap tubing, a heat gun, and strain relief a batch of Lightning cables every 6 months? So they don’t last 3 months.
I know it’s irrelevant.
https://people.kernel.org/bleung/now-how-many-usb-c-to-usb-c...
120W type-c PD+QC
It's unfortunate they don't have strong strong interoperability requirements.
Contrary to other 'messes', this one is worth surmounting.
I now have to buy a crap ton of adapters to get the same functionality as I had in 2014, and sometimes they don't work. I don't know why, they are meant to, but they don't.
Also, Magsafe was a game changer.
If I had a choice between USB-C and ports-o-plenty as I had on my 2014 MBP I would choose the latter.
If you thought the transition from ATA -> SATA or PCI, PCI + AGP, PCI-E path was bad, imagine trying to move an industry like USB that has USB1.0, USB2.0, USB3.0, USB3.1 and deals with peripheral components that change at an even slower cadence than internal ones (computers are something like 3-5 years, peripherals are like 3-10). By comparison mobile has had a life span of ~1-3 years (slowing down I think as there's plenty of 3-5 year users now & their numbers grow every year). The 1-3 cycle only happens for as long as you have a growing user-base & the churn is required for rapid change to be possible (the market economics support it).
When I think about the market dynamics, USB-C is a critical backbone you had to land first (which I didn't see when it was first being pushed on us in the consumer electronics industry). USB4 is going to clean some of it up. Without it we were never going to get away from the mess we were in. That being said, USB-C is still a big too big. That's why Apple hasn't moved. The question will be if the next push will be for contactless data transfer or a smaller connector. It'll depend on whether mobile needs the space (& again - even mobile is losing its power to power such a transition) & whether major consumer electronics will identify new small form-factor markets that require a smaller connector. If the Apple Watch/AirPods is any model for how these will work, then no. So we'll get USB5 & USB6, but it'll be "boring" transitions like it is with Ethernet RJ45 cables (Cat 4, Cat 5, Cat 6, Cat 6e, Cat7) etc. Some of the customer complexity will be trickier to navigate if the labelling piece isn't addressed for cables & ports (otherwise you get an alphabet soup of standard names supported by a given cable/port & what the peripheral requires). These are hopefully more manageable problems though (although more tricky than Ethernet). One could imagine where you have different classes to describe power the cable & port can run, a different class of the functionality supported (power only, peripherals, peripherals + displays). Peripheral speeds here would be > than ethernet so we're also potentially going to see USB-C consume the space of ethernet ports. This happened in laptops but it'll be trickier in PC form factors. Everything you'd plug into is RJ45 anyway & ethernet is significantly cheaper on a $/ft basis since it's cheaper. Maybe it'll intercept when consumer ethernet starts to be 10gigabit/s or 100gigabit/s (if USB4/5/6/ supports the speed & lengths needed & the cost is comparable, they'd probably just layer it over that). I remember working with 1gigabit and 10gigabit/s in 2009 at QCOM when the Cat6 standard for Gigabit had just come out & gigabit has only became prevalent in the past few years. You naturally want to consolidate these things as a business to simplify your costs if your sell-through is into a market with very long cycles. Any market that has more iteration. Wireless comms will be that a for a bit until BT & WiFi eat everything they haven't already (& potentially WiFi will eat BT eventually). Proprietary cheap connectors/wireless in the ultra low-cost niches will be the longest holdouts but even then they'll struggle as the customer demand will probably prefer the standard name it sees everywhere else.
Manufacturers treating users as stupid is the problem. USB-C is only one aspect.
If you look at specs from Apple, Nintendo and random-knock of brands from aliba.com, you will see that they only mention the ports. nothing else. Apple will sometime use a vague spec, like the wattage.
Now look at USB-C specs from HP and other more reputable sources. They will specify all the PD profiles, which thunderbolt version is supported, how many lanes, etc.
The same happens with WiFi devices. You will be lucky if lesser brands even mention the protocol, let alone antennae and MIMO details!
Same can be said of Bluetooth (from cars to headsets!) which will not say if they implement a specific profile or not, but will plaster "BLUETOOTH 5.0" on the box.
The irony, is that consumers see Apple and other offenders as having better products. Just look at this thread on how the very top voted comment is someone glad that it is convenient, even though the first reply to it is trying to explain how they can fry their devices, only to be replied by someone saying "i don't care, it worked fine with the one charger i tried".
- Apple made some different standard that uses the same Plug
- Power supplies come at different power ratings (who would have thought!)
Of course this is not ideal, but it is already better than not being able to get _any_ 3rd part power supply at all.
Such device would be either quite "fun" to use, unless it had type C ports marked with dedicated functionality, so you'd have to be careful what device you plug to what port.
AFAIK there's no protocol to control other ports via PD from the port you'd connect to the "main" device (like your laptop). So the behavior would be all pretty random, or the ports would have to be fixed in function.
Then I upgraded by phone, to one with a USB-C port.
Most of my chargers had a single USB port, so I would need to detach the cable if I wanted to switch device. That's if I had a cable to hand. I had invested in around 20 good quality micro-USB cables and now I needed more. Some chargers had the port integrated into the plug so that would be useless for the phone.
In the end, I acquired a set of converters so I could put a little dongle on the end of each cable in case I wanted to charge the phone. I silently curse the USB people every time I attach or detach the extra tip.
Frankly, the new connector was completely unasked-for. If the phone manufacturer had offered a choice between micro-USB or USB-C, I'd have gone for micro-USB every time. The ability to plug it in either way around just isn't enough to make it worth switching.