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Comment by jedimastert | Hacker News Reader

> 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.

Silly question time, why would we not expect that?

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I mean you can expect whatever you want. what I'm saying is the beautiful past where all USB cables were perfectly interchangeable never existed. in the last generation we had power-only cables, data-only (although this is out of spec, I believe), and various out of spec fast charging implementations. if you pick up a random usb charging block and micro-usb cable, there was never any guarantee that it would transfer data to your phone, fast charge it, or even charge it at all.

It is still correct for the end user to expect that. If you make something that breaks the expectation it should be your fault. A connector is a connector, a cable it a cable. If they all physically fit it should just work, and whoever broke that should be legally at fault. Now I will admit that cables break, and connectors wear out, both of which are not the fault of the manufacture. However it should just work.

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.

In other words, one kind of cable plus out of spec trash (but mostly benign micro-USB chargers with no chance of people attempting data transfers). The worst I've encountered with "old" USB is a vintage Nokia phone that refuses to charge from its data-only micro USB port.

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.

> plus high voltages that can fry devices

Any examples of this other than the Switch?

I've only seen one charging-only cable, and it was a very weird shape. I've never seen a data-only cable. And while proprietary fast-charging exists does that affect the cables?

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.

Those cables were distinct upon physical inspection (missing pins), which USB C cables are not.

sure, if you're familiar with the pinout, you can tell whether the data or power lines are completely missing. there was still no guarantee that any arbitrary cable would work with whatever fast charge implementation you were using. you would likely get 0.5A trickle charging at least, but the device could also just refuse to charge at all.

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.

>sure, if you're familiar with the pinout

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.

> Literally half the pins are missing on charge-only cables.

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.

>okay, but unless you know which pins are missing, how do you know you're not looking at a data-only cable?

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.

No they're not.

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.

Let me counter with another question: Do you also expect random HDMI and LAN cables to have the same capabilities?

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