Ask HN: Does anyone else question USB-C as an “improvement”? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Does anyone else question USB-C as an “improvement”?

93 pointskkielhofner196 comments

I know it's been discussed ad nauseam over the years but USB-C has been driving me crazy:

- Not knowing the capabilities of any port or device. Reminds me of the Plug and Play days: "well let's plug it in and see what happens".

- Power delivery? Passthrough? Good luck finding the magical combination of supported devices, wattage, etc. Even when I thought I found the right one my laptop would occasionally end up in some weird state between discharging and charging - taking power but not acknowledging it in software and slowly discharging but not as much without power...

- Display Port alt-mode. Where do I even start... Some cables mostly work but running two 4k displays reliably at 60Hz seems to be near impossible. Occasionally a display drops completely and there's some sort of strange reboot/shut down/kill power to everything combination I haven't quite figured out yet. They randomly drop from 60Hz to 30Hz or don't initialize at 60Hz. Then some cables don't support DPMS, DDC, who knows what else.

It seems that with high speed (10gbit or so from what I recall) via USB A, extremely capable HDMI, and dedicated charging ports prior to USB-C that was the epitome of connectivity, function, and reliability.

Initially I attributed all of this to the inevitable quirks of any new technology but after several years it seems as though these issues (and more) may never get sorted out.

What am I missing?

View on HN

I like the more rugged connection than the previously dominant connector for small devices, microusb. Those connectors just aren't meant for the duty cycle they are regularly subjected to, and trashing a small electronic thing because the friggin' port got bent or ripped out or desoldered while the rest of it works perfectly fine is intensely frustrating.

I like the lightning connector for this reason, it has the reversibility of USB-C while not suffering from a terrible lack of structural integrity. I can pinch the damn thing into a pancake, so weak!

Really? Personally I hate the lightining socket for the lack of durability. It's the first thing that breaks in all my iPhones. Granted, it starts happening gradually after 5 years or so, but it's not an issue with my Samsungs some of which are 10-years old. When you combine it with a battery that is non-replaceable* by the user, it basically encourages you to throw away otherwise a perfectly working device. My iPhone 5S is still able to make calls and send messages as well as take pictures. So is my iPhone 7. Except that both have broken lightning ports that I had to replace. For me, that's the single point of failure on an otherwise excellent device. And I'm still using my old iPad and iPod with the wide connector - no any problems whatsoever!

* Granted, it's a problem of many if not most phones now, but arguably it was Apple who started that insane trend.

Usb-c ports on macbooks are pretty famous for wearing out so you start to get external display connection problems. Although like you said I also had to replace the lightning port on my iPhone so I guess they might not be that different.

> my Samsungs some of which are 10-years old

Samsung cutting off upgrades to my 1 year old phone is why I switched to iPhone. I didn't want to mess with CyanogenMod on a phone I used for work. I'd prefer a phone with software and hardware that lasts 5 years instead of a phone with software that lasts 1 year and hardware lasts 10.

My S9 is well into year 4 & gets security updates. When it's done getting Samsung support I can install LineageOS. Im not aware of Samsung making any phones with 1 life support.

I have a OnePlus6T that runs a mainline linux kernel. This will run forever.

Galaxy S2 or S4. I don't want an unofficial OS or security updates only.

It depends on the carrier.

my s9 doesnt. my oneplus 6t doesnt. both are "customer provided equipement". the s9 still gets manufacturer updates. the oneplus will allegedly be supported by mainline linux for decades.

> My iPhone 5S is still able to make calls and send messages as well as take pictures. So is my iPhone 7. Except that both have broken lightning ports that I had to replace

That doesn't correlate to my experience. My iPhone 5S:

- Cannot make calls or text, because the towers that power 3G have been shut down.

- Charges perfectly fine over lightning

- Is stuck on iOS 12

- Takes pictures (we agree on this one!)

Meanwhile, it needs a new battery to have a longer lifespan. That's the only single point of failure.

I'll contrast that to the various Android devices, where the first point of failure is the USB port.

I will say, at one point I thought that the lightning port was failing. A piece of trash had gotten trapped in it. Removing the blockage fixed the problem.

Funny pretty much half of the lightning cables I see are completely falling apart, let's not even talk about the fact that leaving contacts exposed to where they can be touched by fatty fingers is generally a terrible idea. I guess that's also why we haven't seen lightning being upgraded to speeds beyond USB2 speeds.

The speed of lightning seems pretty irrelevant, it is not meaningfully used for anything other than charging and carplay at this point. Adding in a USB3 bus is a waste of money.

Continuing to make, ship, and sell single-purpose cables that are only compatible with a single device model is also a waste of money.

I agree - why Apple has stuck with it for so long is beyond me. They have gone USB-C on their laptops big time so why not just switch the iOS devices as well?

Easy. Replacement of a $10 cable is better than a $1000 iPhone pro when the contacts wear out.

When they flip to USB, they’ll use some sort of wireless solution.

Not saying it's the be all end all of connectors but it's also used on all their mac accessories at this point. I have a single lightning cable at my desk that charges keyboard, trackpad, airpods and phone. Only thing it doesn't do is the watch.

How are you supposed to get your 1TB ProRes videos off it then?

You’d think Photos app (abomination) would be smart enough to get them directly wirelessly, but no you need to get them on iCloud first…

> lightning cables [...] completely falling apart

All my 2+ years old Apple cables (Lightning or USB-C) have issues with their insulation, yellowing and fraying, but their connectors are still good. So they get shrink-wrapped and off they go.

It seems it's caused by Apple using some kind of biodegradable polymer instead of the usual PVC.

I think the plastic piece that covers connector is too small. With greasy or wet fingers it’s real challenge to remove hence occasional tug on cable itself.

Yeah, I think the main issue is pulling on the cable. I have literally never had a cable break in the 8+ years I've used iPhones but I've had a few break within 3-6 months of my wife taking them over. I'm pretty anal with how I remove my cables but I will also say that after so long with basically the same cable materials (at least since 30 pin connector), it's an obvious design flaw which should have been addressed somehow.

Apple has a weird history around cables, it's one of the few things that survived. There were years where every other cable would have a decent rubber nubbin to ensure that the cable wouldn't be damage by flex but Steve Jobs wanted the clean look of the cable, so Apple continually shipped badly designed cables. It's one of the few things Apple still hasn't got over. We got our function keys back, but this.... one step too far.

I feel like lightning cables don't last as long as USB cables, but lightning ports last much longer than micro/mini USB ports. Since I can buy many new cables for the price of a phone, I'm happy with that tradeoff.

At this point Lightning is sore thumb - the only proprietary cable and everything else is USB-C. Lightning cables = environmental waste.

And at one point it was lightning and everything else was micro-usb. Some of lightning cables from back then still work. Changing connectors is ewaste.

This is not changing connectors, this is erasing connectors

There's way more usb-c cables around than lightning

Where Apple got to trillion dollar capitalization the first time, the joke was that it have done it due to savings on shitty lightning cables.

Lightning connectors don't have enough pins to replace all that USB-C connectors do.

AFAIK they can't even handle USB3

I find the pins on the connector on all my lightning cables gets scorched and stops working no matter what brand or quality of cable I buy. It is as if iPhones don't limit current inrush and the gold plating on the cable arcs and is worn off when the connector is plugged in. The connectors on the phone, however, are fine for years.

OP is talking about a desktop environment, where mini / micro USB wasn't the problem.

For a mobile device with only a single port, I think making that port USB-C is undeniably the best move. But for a desktop or laptop with four, six, eight ports with different functionalities... That's the point of OP's post.

Heh, anecdotally, on two of my previous phones, the USB-C port failed on me in the exact manner to describe. Since I couldn't take the phone apart without destroying it, the phone was then effectively useless. I never had that issue with any of my micro-usb devices.

Had the exact same experience. Usb-c ports are much more flimsy than micro/mini.

Supposedly the microUSB connector is made such that the cable end will fail and wear out much sooner than the port since it is much easier to replace the cable. This sort of makes sense (and I am sure this type of thinking goes into any cable design) but the main problem I had with it was those two little dumb spring loaded things on the bottom of the cable end that kept it in place. Those ALWAYS eventually wear out and then you end up with a cable that will work if it is kept in just the right place but fail if it is moved at all.

I feel like 80% of my frustration with USB C would be gone if I could know, for any device, "is this charging as fast as it could"? Ideally that's a question that'd be answered by the software UI, but shockingly none of the many USB C devices I own displays that information.

I have a USB C cable that has a small screen built in to the connector that will display wattage, it's a really nifty product (search Amazon, there are a bunch of random brands selling them). I hope to see more screens/visual indicators built in to cables to communicate what's happening over the connection, that'd help with the problems you've outlined to an extent.

You plug off-brand cables from Amazon that you know contain microcontrollers into your USB-C port? Brave!

Essentially all* USB C cables have microcontrollers in them to negotiate power delivery and what protocols are supported.

* it’s possible to have a USB C cable that’s really entirely passive, but in that case it falls back to USB 2 speed and the default USB power, as if it had a Type A connector on it.

No, this is incorrect. Most USB-C cables don't contain any parts more complicated than a resistor (used for cable direction detection). PD negotiation is handled by a microcontroller in the charger, not the cable.

The only USB C cables with any sort of active components in them are electronically marked cables for >60W charging, and USB4 ("Thunderbolt") cables with active transceivers. Everything else is purely passive.

When I said "entirely passive" I did mean use of resistors, which are a passive component. Electrically every USB C cable is completely backward compatible.

But I am surprised by your assertion. I check every type c cable that comes into the house and have not seen one without any kind of e-marker for many years (admittedly I buy all the cables in the household, and we never had any old android phones).

As I mentioned, you can't get any more than baseline power delivery over a cable that isn't e-marked with its current capacity -- this check (SPO prime) is the first thing you have to do BEFORE talking to the remote device. Also any modes from 3.1 gen1 or beyond (TBH I think it's 3.0 or beyond but I don't have the spec in front of me) need a e-marker chip to tell the endpoints what the cable is capable of. Unfortunately OSes are poor at reporting this info.

I do wish that someone would make a type c charging cable that supports PD 2.0, 1.2 -- love those USB version names -- or even 3.0, but allowed no data transmission between endpoints. Basically a USB C condom cable. Haven't seen any of them.

I heard you can manually disable certain pins to do this. Or there may be cables designed for digital forensics that already have this done.

I'm not sure how that could work in USB C. You can definitely do it for USB A, and a lot of cheap charger cables do this to reduce BOM. But with USB C, the data lines are used for configuration negotiation (including PD) before being turned over to client data transmission.

> But with USB C, the data lines are used for configuration negotiation (including PD)

PD negotiation takes place over the CC pins, not over the USB data pins.

This, and much more, is explained in TI's document "A primer on USB Type-C and USB Power Delivery Applications and Requirements":

https://www.ti.com/lit/wp/slyy109a/slyy109a.pdf

Thanks. I lost my access to the standard itself a few months ago.

This link does not work any more - any idea if there is an updated one?

Looks like TI just updated it a few days ago:

https://www.ti.com/lit/wp/slyy109b/slyy109b.pdf

> I check every type c cable that comes into the house and have not seen one without any kind of e-marker for many years

I would be very surprised by that. Most USB-C cables are not electronically marked -- this is usually only present in higher-end cables marketed for charging laptops and tablets.

> As I mentioned, you can't get any more than baseline power delivery over a cable that isn't e-marked with its current capacity

Depends what you mean by "baseline power delivery". As far as I'm aware, all USB-C cables, even ones without an electronic marker, support up to 60W (3A @ 20V).

> Also any modes from 3.1 gen1 or beyond (TBH I think it's 3.0 or beyond but I don't have the spec in front of me)

3.1, maybe. USB 3.0 is detected passively -- if the SS pairs are present, the cable supports USB 3.0, and its use is negotiated over USB 2, just like it was with legacy USB 3 cables.

In theory, Android should be protecting us from most attacks anyway, as public charge stations are common and people are gonna use them.

My android does this and it's definitely a huge plus.

I have one too. It’s super useful to see what voltage and current the device is using.

I have two USB-C ports in the armrest of my car. One connects to Android Auto and charges my phone to full in about an hour. The other doesn't connect to Android Auto, and charges my phone to full in about six hours.

I've owned the car for three years, and didn't notice the charging difference until a few months ago.

Oh weird, I've never heard of this. On my Bolt, the UsbA has Android auto, but no UsbC for fast charging. I bought a UsbC cigarettes adapter which allows me to fast charge, but I lose Android auto. My solution: splice together a UsbA and UsbC cable, plug in both. Now I get both features.

My Pixel phone tells me the charging rate the lock screen when I plug it in (outside of the adaptive charging hours). There is a notice at the bottom that either says "charging slowly" or "charging quickly".

Or just "Charging", which IIRC happens when the device is plugged into a USB3-capable host?

I had a similar experience with my car, which has 2x USB-A. The charge rate is so slow that if I'm using the phone for navigation, the battery will sometimes drain. It took me months to realize this!

There is no excuse for such a low charge rate, considering the vehicle is a plug-in hybrid and has more than enough battery capacity to charge a phone!

Isn't this only a problem if you use usb-a to usb-c cables? This is why I hate usb-a to usb-c cables with a passion. I wish they would stop making them. I cringe thinking about how many people are missing out on fast charge capabilities because they don't know about this problem.

Considering using fast charging all the time, especially when you don't really need the speed, dramatically decreases battery life you'd think phone manufacturers would be giving cheap, high quality USB C cables that guaranteed fast charging away to help kill the batteries and drive more phone sales. Something evil capitalists would do, right?

Considering the value fast charging adds to my life, I am fine with it dying faster. I am willing to pay for that convenience. Same with cars.

Remembering to plug in my phone at night, or carrying around portable spare batteries is a thing of the past now. It's great!

I’ve solved this by throwing money at it. I only use Thunderbolt 4 usb-c cables for most things.

The spec is higher to achieve certification, but it encapsulates it all (power, bandwidth, etc).

Aren't high speed cables shorter? I thought they were limited to something like 18"/45cm?

I have a 1m Thunderbolt 4 cable, 2m are also pretty common at this point. Not exactly cheap for a cable that length, and the thunderbolt devices are also expensive.

When I was building out my desktop setup the rule of thumb basically became "if I'm not questioning why this is costing so much then it's the wrong component".

My phone (Huawei) has a charging animation with rising bubbles (flowing from the cable into the phone). The speed of the bubbles reflects the charge speed. If I use the original charger (and cable) it says "fast charging", the animation is very quick, and it shows the battery level rapidly rising in 0.01% increments. It's pretty neat.

Except that if it's not on that fast charger, the only speed indicator is the damn bubbles, so I gotta watch for a few seconds and guess if it's faster or slower than other bubble animations I've seen in the past. Every other charger in the house has been a mystery for the last 2 years.

I've recently picked up a couple of 65w GAN chargers which seem nicely compact and powerful enough to be the only chargers I use for everything from now on and never think about this nonsense again.

I discovered that some of my "USB-C" devices only charge with a USB-A to USB-C cable. They won't charge at all with a C to C cable. I'm not sure what the problem is but it's a bit disappointing.

Probably the voltage / wattage they are designed to charge at - if you start with USB-A then you pretty much for sure know the charger will support the standard 1A/2A at 5V charging scheme.

This could even be done by just a small microLED on the cable or device itself. Green means charging full speed, red means not charging, yellow means in between.

The fact that I can successfully plug in a USB-C cable on the first try as opposed to the 3-7th time is a strict improvement.

Perhaps I've been lucky, but I've only had good experience with external monitors et al.

I was always lucky with port and connector alignment - I appreciated the jokes but never personally identified with them.

My experience has been so frustrating and such a time sink if you have recommendations of working hardware combinations I'm happy to hear. I'm already > $3k in hardware at this point. What's another $1k or so?!

I've been able to do that for a long time with lightning cables. Too bad the EU outlawed them ;)

What's that on the latest iPhone in the EU? Oh it's a lightning port. You were saying??

https://www.techradar.com/news/iphone-lightning-port-ban

The article says the EU rule to stop using the lightning port is non binding. I. E. just a suggestion.

The Lightning cables are a waste because they have one use only, on a few devices by a single manufacturer only. Type C is widely adopted, including by the same manufacturer that does Lightning. It's a no-brainer and thankfully finally someone had the guts to force Apple. We also have the EU to thank for the fact that non-Apple devices all use one or two standards ( micro usb or type c for newer ones) and not the bazillion others we had before.

> The fact that I can successfully plug in a USB-C cable on the first try

Depends on the device, I've had low-quality USB-C devices whose transfer speed inexplicably decreased when connected "the wrong way". Not knowing which orientation is the right one until you initiate the transfer is frustrating, and worse IMHO than physically preventing the wrong orientation.

Of course, this issue affects only a subset of mediocre hardware... But the fact that [1] this is possible is quite a downside to USB-C.

[1] https://hackaday.com/2021/03/22/cursed-usb-c-when-plug-orien...

So shitty hardware that doesn't comply with the spec is the spec's fault? Love the logic in this thread!

There’s beauty in making a spec that can’t be broken or doesn’t make financial sense to do so.

USB-C has much more complexity and corners that can be cut than USB-A.

The cheapness of USB-A is also valuable. The other day I bought 5 USB-A to B cables for less than 5 bucks for various microcontroller-related hackery. I can treat them as disposable and won’t hesitate to cut one open should I need some kind of shielded multi-core wire.

In USB-C land, a single cable would cost more than that.

Yes, making accidental non-compliance easy and thus commonplace is IMHO a shortcoming of spec as per Nextgrid's comment.

Also, you can express disagreement without throwing Reddit-style sarcastic snarks.

My experience with plugging in/out is that the plugging in part is better now, but C connectors require much less force to be plugged out by themselves and I have been bitten by cables unplugging just because they were bent in the wrong direction multiple times.

Before USB 3 I thought USB was highly reliable but since USB 3 every Windows laptop I’ve had has had problems with devices being recognized, devices dropping out, plugging a device in causing another to drop out. I don’t know how I’ve gone for years this way without serious data corruption. (Thumb drives and hard drives drop out.)

External monitors with combined USB and display have generally behaved a lot worse with Windows than Mac OS with symptoms like: some endpoints work and others don’t (often the USB Ethernet doesn’t work), the monitor that the Mac enumerates in 5 seconds takes 50 sec on Windows, etc.

Ah, the classic USB plug superposition:

https://i.imgur.com/yyEwOHK.png

About 5 years ago I took the time to learn how to plug in USB-A properly. All you have to do is look. The male side of a USB-A plug has two holes on it. They correspond to a small void where part of the female port[1] connector has to slide in. The two holes on the male plug should almost always face up when the female port is horizontal. If it is vertical, all you have to do is look at the female port to see which side has the internal protrusion. That part has to slide into the male part. It's not that hard. I can do it 99% of the time now.

[1] In truth, both sides of USB-A have male/female parts.

Spec compliant USB A cables and devices make it that the USB logo on the connector is on top (for horizontal ports) or on the left (for vertical ports).

Nobody ever really told the general public that, and now manufacturers are messing it up too.

I actually have a cable somewhere where the USB-A side is reversible; it has a plastic tab in the center that can shift up or down so it'll always plug in.

I mean I don't know if it has any data connections or anything, I think it came with either a JBL speaker or a power bank, but it's pretty clever.

I bought 10 of these[1] about 4 years ago for the kids, and several more times since. The USB-A side is reversible, and the other side combines lightning and micro-usb into a single connector that'll work in either one. And I can't recall if it's this cord or another I have, but the micro-usb side may be reversible as well.

When the kids were getting to the age where they had their own devices, the learning phase was painful (for me more so than them). They kept getting confused between the lightning cable used for their iPad and the micro-usb cables used for everything else (like their battery pack and the random kid gadgets they had that used micro-usb for power supply). Their learning phase was painful (for me) as they'd try whatever cord they came across first in whatever device they needed it for, and continue that cycle until they got a match. And with no sense of how easy it is to break charging ports, they'd be pretty aggressive about it. Same with trying the USB-A side of the cord in the charger/battery, aggressively trying one direction before finally flipping it to try the other (and flipping it again because third try's the charm).

The kids love them because they Just Work for everything with no fuss (at least until recently when USB-C started popping up in some stuff like their Bluetooth headphones). The durability is a bit mixed, as some of the cords started having issues after just a few months while others are still going strong after years of daily use. But between how handy they are and the price, it's worth just treating them as expected consumables and getting enough at once to stockpile.

[1] https://www.aliexpress.com/item/32847997542.html

I'm with you. Why isn't everything perfect already? Because it takes time...

Eg: now that there are cheap 4K 60Hz, displays, we are not happy... We need at them at 144Hz. And being able to chain two of chose. With good speakers... etc etc

Birds eye view: every issue is minor and current state of tech is awesome...

> Why isn't everything perfect already? Because it takes time...

The corollary of this is that some technology getting close to perfect means it's several years old, obsolete and ready to be thrown away to make place for a shiny new thing that's starting from scratch as far as ironing various bugs go.

I’m old enough to remember when USB 1.x came out, and I was incredulous at the time that the standard type-A connector didn’t either (a) use an asymmetric shape like for example the D-sub connectors or (b) wasn’t reversible or coaxial like for example the TRRS connectors. It seemed so obviously stupid. The previously existing connectors that USB was intended to replace mostly didn’t have that problem.

I actually can’t on my MacBook Air M1. You have to get the connector in the right horizontal orientation and at the right physical position. And the portable usb-c docks are so heavy and unwieldy that it becomes difficult to get them in place. If I try to plug it in without looking, then I risk scratching around the MacBook ports. A circular physical connection would be a lot better in my opinion, or at least some kind of physical slotting to help it get the connector in place.

That sounds more like an Apple "form over function" issue than a USB-C issue.

You could put a very small piece of tape over the port and then cut out just the area where the port itself is - that would at least mean that it would stop the connector from scratching the laptop. Clear tape might be pretty invisible.

Using laptops the last decade, charging was such a pain: it’s a special charger in the first place, you can’t just borrow another brand’s cable lying around.

Depending on the brick it won’t charge at the same speed, you can check the wattage on the brick, but buying another one is more than 60+ dollars. Fraying a cable is the same cost, you replace the whole thing.

Even just for that USB-C is a boon, and paying an expensive cable is still cheaper than what we had before.

> cheaper than what we had before

*still have in our drawers

Isn't the same true for USB-C laptops? I've found non-OEM cables as unreliable for anything besides USB data sync. An Apple MagSafe to USB-C costs $60.

I bought one replacement power brick for a laptop I've been using for 10 years. Well worth the $40 or whatever I paid on eBay. Plus there's no way I'd confuse it with the mass of USB-c cables that comes with every modern tech device.

If you want reliable generally USB-IF certified cables will be higher quality. I do not know if they also certify for power but I imagine if a cable is USB-IF certified and also claims higher power PD then it is probably going to be pretty reliable.

> Using laptops the last decade, charging was such a pain: it’s a special charger in the first place, you can’t just borrow another brand’s cable lying around.

it's exactly the same now though. I have a dozen of USB-C cables and exactly one that can charge my higher-power devices reliably

So get more higher quality cables and throw the other ones out?

How is your lack of the proper cable when all you need to do is buy more of the right cables equivalent to a failure of the standard?!?

I have six opened jars of salsa in my fridge, and exactly one is not spoiled. This is a problem with salsa.

Because the standard allows for different quality cables? You get the cheapest possible cable for what they are selling you, so they are not really interchangeable.

Not to speak of brand name devices that have usb-c ports but cannot be powered with usb-c chargers...

I bought:

- https://www.amazon.fr/gp/product/B08XNP4C2Z/ref=ppx_od_dt_b_...

- https://www.amazon.fr/dp/B0882V5Q8W/ref=pe_27091421_48703022...

- https://www.amazon.fr/dp/B081HQLMH4/ref=pe_27091421_48703022...

and I have issues with all of those. what else can I do ? how much is one supposed to put in to get good quality cables and hubs ? 200€ ? 500 ?

https://www.apple.com/shop/product/MLL82AM/A/usb-c-charge-ca...

$19 and can handle up to 96w. It's probably the only product that Apple offers as a bargain.

If the standard allows for "right" and "wrong" cables, then it is not a "successful" standard unless you stretch the definition of "success" almost beyond recognition.

I can charge my phone, headphones, iPad, Oculus, and drone with my laptop charger. That's not worth nothing.

But that one cable can charge all of the devices reliably right? That's still a win over 5 different cables for 5 different devices.

Not necessarily.

The most sure-thing-do-everything cables are both expensive and short, like under 2 feet short. That is not an upgrade in any way from a simple cheap 2 conductor cord with a barrel connector. They carried any amount of current for dirt cheap, and with a 90 degree plug they even swivelled naturally making them practically break-proof without any fancy magnets and pogo pins.

There is the same problem with the chargers, and it's not the case that the bigger more expensive more powerful charger can always handle all tasks. I have 65W laptop chargers that do work on my laptop, that my phone ignores.

You know that old joke drawing of insering a usb plug and it doesn't go, user flips it over, doesn't go, user flips it over again goes this time? That's me trying different cables and chargers to get my google tv no to say the charger is not good enough. I can't use the charger and cable it came with since I need to add a usbc hub for ethernet and storage.

These jacks and plugs all looking identical yet having wildly different function, features, & capacities is not really an upgrade from when different functions had different plugs.

> But that one cable can charge all of the devices reliably right?

no ! some charge at low speed, some at high speed, some don't even connect properly, some only allow keeping using the device while some others make the device think it's connected to a computer - it's a freaking pain

Huh, that hasn't been my experience. The high spec USB PD cables I have seem to work with everything

To me that’s the beauty of it: you can still just pay for the highest cable and use that one and only, as a dedicated cable for your most power hungry device. Keeping the status quo doesn’t cost more, nor is less convenient.

It’s up to each of us to decide what trade-offs we take, how we want to manage charging: buy cheap cables and find those who work, or throw money at the issue, or stick to specific brands (only by first party cables for instance), or take the time and effort to research the right cables.

You just have more choice now.

With the added joy that now all the different cables don't even look different any more. Same plug on everything. What an upgrade!

I'm not saying you're wrong, but this is another decade-long battle.

I have a few laptops here, the newest is from 2016 - none of them has USB-C and they all still work and will probably be in use for another few years.

My 1y old work Latitude (attached to a docking station via USB-C, but the wallplug charger is a proprietary one) is being replaced with another Latitude which only has USB-C. So because I didn't notice that I need a new charger now I can only run the new one on battery or with the docking station until I get to the office.. Great, I just managed to have the one breaking change :P

But that means any USB-C PD Compliant charger should work for your laptop now, right?

Yes, but my point is that a mobile phone wall plug won't do it and none of my private laptops have one, so I'd still have to buy one and hope it will work for this and future devices.

From the perspective of user with slightly advanced knowledge of tech, I totally understand your reasoning and agree. Never knowing what devices will be able to work together in an efficient manner kinda drives me nuts thinking about USB-C.

On the other hand though, from the perspective of a person who just buys and uses tech without thinking too much about it, USB-C is actually kind of great. The device will work perfectly with the included peripherals (unless the manufacturer screwed up massively) and whenever I connect things differently, I'll at least get some use out of it. In a pinch, I can charge my phone on my laptop charger, my laptop on the charger for my wireless headphones and my wireless headphones on the charger for my phone. Neither of them charge as quickly as if they were attached to their original chargers, because they all have incompatible fast charging protocols, but it still works.

USB-C Solved one very simple problem. We used to have lots of different devices that did lots of different things and didn't work together and they all had different cables that wouldn't physically plug in to each other. USB-C now solves that problem. I can plug my webcam directly into my headphones if I want. It won't work, it's clearly a nonsensical thing to do, but I can.

Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn’t stop to think if they should.

You can say the same thing about air. You can connect any two devices with a compatible radio interface over just air.

In solving this non-problem, we have created a new problem.

Before USB-C if I forgot or lost my laptop charger I was totally screwed.

After USB-C I can even charge my MacBook with my Nintendo Switch charger, and I can always find someone that’s got one spare in the office. I’m so done with those incompatible circle-pin chargers!

You may brick your macbook as the switch charger doesn’t follow the spec. This is exactly the problem.

this is literally the problem with any specification then, because there is nothing stopping anyone from not following the specification for a particular port and just doing whatever the fuck they want.

I could hook a lightning cable up to a car battery, and you'd blame the connector.

If it bears the USB logo, the charger should be standards compliant. The switch charger will charge your devices just fine.

The switch console, however, has a non-compliant USB port, which can be damaged when hooked up to a standard USB-PD charger; the pins can get mechanically shorted. Blame Nintendo for that one.

Hasn’t done anything like this yet, it works perfect.

I’ve charged my MacBook with all sorts of USB-C chargers with no issues, including from USB power banks (I was never able to charge my laptop from a standard portable external battery before usb-c!).

Be careful with that and don't even try the other way around - you can brick your Switch: https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2019/08/heres-why-nintendo-sw...

You think an Apple USB-C charger is gonna randomly send 9V to a device which doesn't ask for it?

This story is about wildly out of spec junk hardware.

The article you linked reports that third party docks—not cables—can cause an electrical short in the Switch.

OP should be fine plugging in their Switch via spec-compliant cables.

No problems yet either way around!

Classic HN: New thing bad. upvotes furiously

USB C is a great improvement, I am currently plugged into my monitor which is providing power + USB. I didn't have to try three times to plug it in.

Sure there are rough edges, but overall this was not easily achievable without proprietary technology just ~6 years ago.

I figure give it 5 more years to mature, and we will take it all for granted.

The USB-C specification was published in 2014. I understand what you're saying but this is my question - should it take 13 years for the fundamental primitives that USB-C provides to finally iron out?

Why are we still using IPv4? The time to upgrade a standard is probably exponentially related to the size of the install base. The computing ecosystem is much bigger than it was 20 years ago.

> I am currently plugged into my monitor which is providing power + USB. I didn't have to try three times to plug it in.

Unrelated to the plug orientation, occasionally my laptop fails to properly connect to my monitor over USB C (providing both data and power) until I have plugged it in several times. The issue could be either the monitor, laptop, or cable. This is just anecdata, but it shows how USB C alone hasn't solved the problem where it doesn't just work the first time.

Maybe it's just me but coming home and plugging my macbook into my dell monitor with a single cable for charging, ethernet, video, audio, camera, etc is worth all the smaller incompatibility foibles I've had. I also love traveling with just 1 type of charger.

I just wish they printed the max wattage on cables and chargers.

90% of the problems with USB-C I had went away once I started really overpaying for USB-C cables (I'm talking genuine cable from the Apple store kind of thing). https://www.apple.com/shop/product/MN713AM/A/thunderbolt-4-p... is expensive as hell, but it's actually a Thunderbolt 4 cable and not something else, and so it does what it needs to.

And the remaining 10% of problems? What are they?

Annoying adapters for all my normal junk, but various USB-C "hubs" solved those (there are many different ones, but most are the same chip inside, but for old USB mice, etc it doesn't usually matter).

$130 for a cable? You can get a smartphone for that much.

You don't need a Thunderbolt 4 cable for a phone. That's a cable for connecting your laptop to your monitor. By contrast, HDMI cables have gotten so crappy nowadays that I have to pay about half of that to know that I'm not going to have a problem.

However, I don't skimp on USB-C stuff anymore. I buy the nice expensive GaN chargers, and I buy nice cables. And I don't have problems.

Yeah, it's a pain, but after three or four times buying "high end" yumcha cables from Amazon I finally went to a real store and got a real cable.

Similar spec ones from Best Buy, etc also worked.

Or just buy USB-IF

Right. We need to go back to parallel ports. Simple, 25 pins on one ends, 25 or 36 pins on the other, only a few handshake lines and data lines that were data lines not some polymorphic "who knows what you're gonna get" portal to RICH CHUNKY AMPS.

Of course there was the same variety of standards and connectors and in some instances even incompatible electrical implementations there too; just without the advertising of "everything is supposed to work together".

maybe our progress has been limited to the propaganda side alone.

I definitely don't miss the infinite combinations of DB-9 to DB-25, making sure your TX/RX lines were lined up correctly, baud rate, 8N1 (or whatever), etc. Then making sure your UART can actually do it all...

But is it really fair to compare 80s/90s connectivity to 2020 while skipping over the decades between 2000 and 2020?

"Baud rates" woulda been rs232 serial, unless you were getting really advanced in your parallel port fiddling. rs232 is still recognizably in use in surprising places, often on bare header pins, but still there.

"fair?" I dunno. the problems recur, the intermediate period had "VGA standards" that flowed over a wide range; and others that exhibited the same problems we see with USB-C here.

I'm pretty sure they had similar issues with crap like antenna connectors and tube socket standards back when they were the cutting edge, too.

The field I'm in still uses serial a ton. It does what's it's supposed to and it's plenty fast how it is, so no has changed it in decades.

I don't remember all of that RS232 stuff because my memory is that good - I'm reminded every time I deal with anything "embedded" :). I still cross my fingers when flashing - hoping my chosen speeds and params won't brick the device.

I helped design an USB-to-serial converter thing to directly go into the silicon of one of these chips you can program. It acts like an USB-to-serial converter on the USB side, but on the device side, it 'forgets' the to-serial and simply directly spits out the bytes it receives on USB. It's interesting how many serial-related parameters become no-ops - you can set the baud rate, parity, data bits etc to whatever value you want, the device happily ignores it and everything keeps working anyway. It's the nice part of tight standards, I guess.

(But don't ask me about the shenanigans Windows needs to see in the USB descriptor to allow programs to access an otherwise driver-less USB device - yech)

I definitely remember the difference but other than the various high speed modes (EPP and EPC, from what I recall) parallel ports worked for their intended purpose.

I mentioned RS232 serial because that was a true "cluster f**" with the issues I enumerated and more.

VGA was fun too. I remember early Linux documentation materials warning users that the wrong scanline modes for X could fry the hardware. Not sure if that was an actual occurrence but I remember triple checking just to make sure :).

cough that’s DE-9 you’re talking about; the B shell is large and the E shell much smaller.

I couldn't disagree more - I've had FAR more problems with HDMI than with USB C/Thunderbolt. Sticking with quality cables and not the bargain basement specials off of Amazon (or hell, anything remotely related to electronics on Amazon) is probably the single greatest critical success factor here.

As for the charging - as others point out I put that as more a software problem. That devices don't more clearly and prominently display this kind of information is definitely an issue - but once again, make sure the physical layer (your chargers and cables) are high quality and just about everything you complain about is a non-issue. I can't wait for non-USB C stuff to slowly die out. Will be nice to finally have one physical connection (that doesn't suck!) for pretty much everything I need to do.

To be honest, USB 3 was already a loss in some aspects: USB 2 allowed for extremely thin USB drives (as thick as the inner part of the plug); several keyboards had plugs, cables were thin, all sorts of gadgets were made. With USB 3, the extra pins required extra thickness; the beefier requirements made many cables shorter and thicker, and connectors diminished in number (due to more expensive constraints). The extra pins introduced new failure modes (I had a pen drive with internal bent pins, very hard to see, impossible to repair), but at least most people respected the color conventions (blue).

If only color coding was used to help disambiguate some USB C features, that might help somewhat. When buying USB-C cables, I have between $5 and $125 for the same length; the vendor lists all kinds of features (power delivery, Thunderbolt 3, what else) but things simply do not work in the end.

Overall, the whimsical Cambrian explosion of USB 2 and all sorts of funny pen drives and gadgets started dying with USB 3, and I'm not expecting to see it return with USB-C. With increasing power demands and what not, maybe we'll soon see wall plugs with USB-C instead of ordinary plugs. At least international travelers won't need adapters anymore...

I have a wall outlet that has a USB-C port along with two conventional 120v sockets. (It's also got a USB-A port on it - there don't seem to be versions with two C ports widely available yet.)

> Even when I thought I found the right one my laptop would occasionally end up in some weird state between discharging and charging - taking power but not acknowledging it in software and slowly discharging but not as much without power...

This is actually pretty common in new macs. The computer can consume more power than the power bricks that came with them can provide, so they use the battery to augment it. Not a big issue if it's a relatively intermittent load, but a silly PITA if the load is constant. This is also somewhat related to the limits of PD at 100w (20V 5A)

IMO, what you're missing is... nothing. The pros are the lack of polarity (usually) of the plug and the ubiquity of USB-C ports is nice for the basics. But anything remotely specialized (non-trivial power supply, thunderbolt, DP, etc.) and it becomes a crapshoot of "does this cable support this" and "does this specific port support this" - both of which are "no" far too often.

My favorite example is a bluetooth headphone adapter with a USB-C port that won't charge unless the other end of the cable is a USB-A adapter.

I'm waiting for reports of a fire from a cheap cable that tells its users and connected devices "sure, I can support 100w of power delivery."

> my laptop would occasionally end up in some weird state between discharging and charging

Are you sure you can blame this on your USB-C charger and not your laptop's battery management firmware ?

Its possibly just that your laptop GUI is not showing you what's going on it the background.

It is quite likely that the laptop lets the battery drain a bit and then intermittently trickle charges.

That could absolutely be the case. I've already been hard enough on them but my Framework laptop is the worst offender in this area although the most recent BIOS release I'm running supposedly addresses the issue:

"Fix low battery cutoff causing system to not power on or charge if the laptop is allowed to self discharge. We suggest updating to 3.07 to prevent this issue."[0]

[0] https://knowledgebase.frame.work/en_us/framework-laptop-bios...

USB C is just the connector. The functionality is subject to the cable itself.

Sounds stupid, but it is what it is.

There should be a tiny symbol on the connector, giving you exactly this information. Looking through my USB C cable some of them actually have it. Most have no information on them.

I can not look up the IEC norm at the moment, but I'm sure they forgot about that little detail.

I think a major change was to improve the physical connection and be rid of polarity; old port was fragile and prone to being forced in backward.

Personally, as someone who gets a lot of crud in the port, I can say cleaning out USB-C is far easier than B micro, and less risk of pin damage.

Though I agree with much of what you are saying, particularly the compatibility aspect

The issue I've been having is that for whatever reason the USB-C design seems to have a problem with twisting/tension near the ends in a way the USB-A and any of the USB-B varieties ever did. I've gone through more USB-C cables then I have replaced USB-A/USB-B cables from wear and tear then anything else. I'm not sure if it is the compact nature of the shroud to fit the spec but there seems to be no strain relief in the nature of the design and I'm usually breaking through the insulation in the matter of months and breaking the connector entirely to make it stop working a few months after that. Having to go buy replacement USB cables for things that were not my fault (misplacing or accidents) is just alien to me and premium OEM or the cheapest things seem to fail the same way at the same rate. With the increased actual power being sent through these new connectors and wires it just seems like I'm going to get an unfortunate jolt one of these days.

I would also say that the USB-C ports seem to get dirty in ways that end up affecting how the cable seats for a hours or years it always seemed to be reliable positive connection way more than I've had with other USB types. I haven't really looked at the mechanics of it but the number of times I feel like I've plugged in and gotten positive connection only to find out the connection was loose is way higher than I had with USB-A. With USB-A if you got it into the connector whether it was for an hours or years it always seemed to be reliable and not something to worry about.

A good majority of these issues could have happened without USB-C.

The could happen and they definitely did but I don't remember this level of frustration and flakiness since (as noted) the early Plug and Play days.

Pre Plug and Play you had to have a cheat sheet of IRQ assignments and memory ranges next to any computer so you had a halfway decent chance of getting a new ISA expansion card to work. The early days of Plug and Play were reminiscent of USB-C today - as I noted plug it in and hope (Plug and Pray). However, from my anecdotal experience the reliability of Plug and Play advanced very rapidly and within a few years it was extremely clear to anyone that this was a significant step.

Fast forward to now and you have PCIe with rapidly increasing speeds, a thoughtful connector design, and variable lane support. All with backward compatibility and downgrade of lanes and speed. Sure I've had a few issues (mostly in the early days) with weirdly wired slots and devices refusing to come up at max supported revision and lane configurations. But at least in those few limited experiences I've never had PCIe not work or have any fundamental reliability issues.

USB-C is great, I don't see any problem with it. Some crappy cables that don't follow spec aren't capable of carrying the full signal, but that's what you get for cheaping out on cables. HDMI and DisplayPort cables have the same issue, but graphics cards and monitors are compensating for that.

The real issue is the devices that USB-C cables plug into. Special USB ports that do more than others are just a dumb design. If you're going to support a feature, support that feature on all ports or don't support it at all. There's no rule that says you can't have a HDMI or DisplayPort connector if you install a USB-C port, so if you're only going to support DP on only one side, just put the physical port there.

My phone can hook up to a keyboard, mouse and ethernet connector through the charging port just like my laptop and that's just great. No more messing with OTG adapters and voltage injection, it Just Works.

Laptop manufacturers that are cheaping out on their USB designs, especially on premium models, should not be tolerated. If I plug something into the left USB-C port, it should do the exact same thing as when I would plug it into the right USB-C port, or your laptop is broken. We should start returning these defective machines instead of tolerating these terrible business decisions.

Both C ports on my laptop do the exact same thing and support the same features. I haven't had any trouble with USB-C at all, despite the shitty support many enterprise systems have (those stupid DisplayLink docks are a pain to get working in Linux regardless of what connector they use).

If you just stop assuming anything it works pretty well. High grade pricey cables or TB cables with PD in the backpack, always. That's half the problem.

The fact that I can charge 90% of the devices in my house with my PD charger is worth any ambiguity in other features.

But I do seem to have an issue with dirt getting into ports and some low grade cables seemingly being out-of-spec when it comes to the physical connection. They don't feel properly seated and jiggle. Not a great feeling.

This is somewhat true of all modern cables and ports. They are all overloaded to some degree. It's hard to tell just by looking what resolutions and refresh rates a DisplayPort or HDMI device can handle on both the display and output side. For example my monitor will do 144Hz with FreeSync on over DisplayPort and can do 144Hz over HDMI but not with FreeSync on, then it's capped to 100Hz. Not even the manual lists that. Hard to tell what a GPU supports without memorizing model info. We have USB 3 ports where some can do 10Gb/s, most do 5 (My mobo has 1 10Gb/s A port) that are hard to distinguish if at all, some computers don't even bother color coding USB 3 ports either.

Standard small connector for device-device communication: Check

Standard power connector for everything: Check

High speed communications that are capable of even video: Check

Is it perfect? No. Is it plagued by committee design? Sure.

Does it solve 80% of the problems? Yes.

The connector itself I love - microUSB was just awful, mini USB was the weird ugly cousin, and that abomination of a connector that was USB3 (the microUSB combined with the long skinny one) was the worst of the bunch. USB-A still remains a good option and I do not see it going away anytime soon.

As to what you are describing above I think that does lend itself to a ton of confusion. Thunderbolt can be done over what looks like USB-C. Tons of different power specs. For the non tech people it must be confusing as hell.

Then again I would take the confusion with a single connector over many multiples of connectors if that is the alternative. What might have been a good idea would be to create a series of USB-C connectors that are slightly different but compatible in a downward fashion. For example if you bought a Thunderbolt compatible USB-C connector that could also do high current PD it could have a small notch in it that matched up to a lightning compatible port. This same cable could be used in a regular lowly USB-C port for regular power and USB3 but a normal USB-C cable could not be connected to the Thunderbolt port of the laptop.

That would also introduce additional confusion however as most lightning ports can also act as regular USB3 ports, etc etc. I guess this is the price we pay for universal compatibility. Maybe a color coded system (like the blue with USB3-A ports) could help this - Thunderbolt ports and cables could require a yellow marker somehow - USB3 a blue marker - HDMI over USB-C could be red.

Having a cable that's the same on both ends and also in both orientations is kind of nice. Having a standard with decent power delivery is even nicer. I no longer have to pack special power adapters and cables for multiple devices, and worry about those devices becoming unusable if I lose either. I can just pack a generic charger and know that it will work well enough for everything I have. I might pack two kinds of cables (micro and C) but I can also get those just about anywhere so that's not a worry. Definitely an improvement there.

OTOH, the fact that different identical-looking cables will support different charging rates, data rates, and even functionality is insane. USB-IF really messed up by not requiring clear standardized labeling of these things on every cable and adapter. Besides the fact that the ambiguity is inconvenient, it enables outright fraud. The market is full of cables which don't actually do what the one that came with your device did, which might even claim to do it, but you never know until you actually open the package and try to use it ... which is too late.

Also, not USB-IF's fault, but why are there so damn few chargers with more than one USB-C port? I understand that it would be unreasonable to expect much power through more than one, but it's also annoying that I need to have A-to-C cables because I have more C devices than I have ports.

I feel like USB-C is the moment when USB finally lives up to it's "universal" name. It's great. I can standardize on chargers and cables and be sure everything will just work. I just wish high-quality adapters were available so that I could do away with hubs and semi-permanently plug an adapter into the USB-A end of whatever special cable is needed. More advanced power supplies with more visibility and control would be nice too.

Not a heavy user of USB-C's extended features. For me it has been wonderful. The kids haven't broken a USB-C kindle by being aggressive with the plugs. I used to buy new cables every couple of months, because they would follow a path where they would work for everything, to not charging a kindle but still works in my phone, to not working in anything. I have yet to have a USB-C cord stop working, and need to be replaced with a new cord.

It's not perfect, but it's clearly an improvement.

I have a box full of USB adapters. A to B, A to A-female. Micro to A-female, and on and on and on.

It's not great that your charging speed may be limited by the cable specs, but it charges much faster with the wrong kind of USB-C cable than if you have micro-USB when the device takes mini-USB.

And the fact that even HAS PD is amazing. My laptop, phone, and headphones all charge with the same cable. That's much easier for travelling.

I have basically zero doubt or hesitation about USB-C, but then again I don't have anything that uses Displayport. It can't be worse than cheap micro HDMI adapters falling apart though.

It's not perfect, it's held back by somewhat nasty legacy stuff. but it's reliable and good enough and would be hard to do any better in practice.

I'm a bit disappointed we haven't actually gone a bit further than we have so far with it though. Lots of products seem to have no excuse not to be C, aside fron there just not being cheap chips and modules.

One thing we really need is a cheap way to do daisy chainable USB and more advanced power topologies, and many smart devices should just be dumb devices that use a special protocol for dongles that add the smarts.

Things like light fixtures could be daisy chained USB. We should have power strips that combine two sources for redundancy. We should have linkable solar generators you can chain together as long as you want, that know which way to send power based on who has the sun and who is empty.

If it were up to me, we would ditch 3.5mm completely, right now, and just have another USB-C port for any device still thinking about supporting analog.

Even hobby robotics could use it with alternate modes for i2c and servos.

Since I don't need it for monitors or ethernet, my only concern is fast charging on my phone. So, I find a generic cable brand, keep buying it, and buy lots. I pitch them when they stop fast charging (which always goes first? somehow) or relegate them to a secondary use. And, this is part of why I try to keep black and silver sharpies on me..

I agree with you, but I wanted to add this stupid detail into the conversation:

USB-C doesn’t ensure that you have any of these features. It’s just the style of connector.

You can have best-of-breed USB with any connector type you want, but obviously the most current hardware is using usb-c.

Not really relevant, but I know, now, to not have any expectations based on the fact that I’m using usb-c.

I initially was extremely skeptical that USB-C was an improvement, but after having used it for 6 months I am totally sold. I was able to buy a relatively cheap dock from Dell, plug in my charging cable, 2 external monitors, printer, ethernet, webcam and a host of other USB-A accessories into the dock. Then I am able to simply connect one single USB-C cable to my laptop and everything works seamlessly.

If I want to move my laptop, I just unplug the one cable, instead of my previous 4-5. Further, I can mount the dock under my desk to hide the clutter and just have the single USB-C cable visible. For me, its working great!

Depends on the use case:

Replacing USB-A? Definitely not. There are so many little devices like wireless adapters, hard drives, thumb drives, etc. There hasn't been much of an effort to convert these to USB-C, so they all need dongles.

Replacing micro-usb? Absolutely. It is so much easier to deal with since it's reversible. Especially in the iOS world since it's either lightning or usb-c for devices.

Docking stations? Yes but it's complicated. I connect one little micro-usb cable to connect 2 monitors, a mouse, and keyboard to my laptop. But it's tricky finding one that supports the right resolutions and refresh rates.

> There hasn't been much of an effort to convert these to USB-C, so they all need dongles.

Not that they really improve the situation itself, but you can also get USB-A to USB-C adapters[1] (and vis versa[2]). Having a few of both on hand has come in handy as I find myself having the wrong port available for the cord/device I need to plug into it. Which seems to be happening more and more often (both for charging needs and peripherals like you mentioned). Can be useful in situations when a dongle is overkill for your needs, or where a dongle isn't really an option to use for the USB-A/USB-C conversion (such as a charger).

[1] https://www.amazon.com/Adapter-Anker-High-Speed-Transfer-Not...

[2] https://www.amazon.com/Syntech-Compatible-Chargers-Standard-...

I have a bunch of USB-C devices where the card edge connector doesn’t seem securely attached. I haven’t had one fail yet so far.

As I see it USB 3 is already a disaster. USB 1 and USB 2 worked on a tree topology where you could plug a tremendous number of devices into a single port and have it really work.

With USB 3 it seems there is some limit to what you can plug into a root hub and once you go over the limit you plug in a mouse and your keyboard drops out. I looked in the specs to find what the limit is and they don’t say, they also don’t promise that any specific topology of hubs is going to work.

I've never run into a software device limit on USB 3. There's a clear power limit if your device doesn't support power delivery though; the standard USB 3 A connector is specced to provide about 2.5W in total and an unpowered hub can easily exceed that (expecially when used in combination with laptops). A powered hub works just fine for those use cases, in my experience, and every USB issue I've encountered has been a power issue in disguise.

You'd have to go to a ridiculous amount of chained hubs for the spec to get in the way of your use case. However, in practice there seem to be a great many hubs and host controllers that don't implement the spec well. Even expensive motherboards come with controllers that don't support USB 3 well enough. When you buy a laptop, you just have to hope those ports are hooked up to your processor's controller because there's no way you'll find out before it fails. Having said that, support has become much better the last few years.

USB1 and 2 both had the same issues with devices dropping in and out. Try plugging in 20 USB HDDs and watch.

I remember when USB was first announced there were videos from trade shows of people plugging in 100 devices. But the reality was that the manufacturers of USB chipsets clearly took shortcuts here and there, rightly never expecting people to actually stack 17 USB hubs in some sort of tentacle nightmare of cabling, and so it never quite worked properly at the extremes.

I had several devices with Micro USB ports. Phones, laptops, tablets, gizmos, portable batteries. All with Micro USB. I purchased too many cables and chargers so whatever room I was in, I would always have a charger.

Then I bought my new phone. It had a USB-C port. Suddenly, I could no longer just plug in the phone to recharge it. I had to have a separate set of cables. I bought a few alternative heads that plugged on the end on the cable but those had a habit of getting lost.

Sure, being able to plug the cable in either way up is nice, but I'd replace it for a Micro USB port in an instant.

I have two complaints about USB-C:

1) The lack of durability and ruggedness. It's very easy to crush the end of a USB cable inside your laptop, or damage the USB port on the laptop's motherboard.

2) The tight tolerances that make it hard to get a good connection. Plugging a high-bandwidth device like a USB-C hub into a laptop is always a roll of the dice. Sometimes I have to unplug and replug several times, meanwhile MacOS is struggling to catch up as external monitors and/or power suddenly disappear and reappear.

One point I haven't seen mentioned: When traveling, a good USB-C cable is a godsend - forget carrying 5 different chargers for 5 different devices, now it's just one for all the devices. It makes it sooo much easier, it's incredible. Gone are the days of cables hanging out of the backpack, searching for the right cable for the Powerbank for the headphones/phone/switch/whatever on the plane.

Well, yes. Fully at questioning stage. Ports on back of two winX laptops (as opposed to the side) - seems to run USB-C to display adapter just fine. But plug and actual USB cable into it - results vary. Ports on the side - run USB things just fine ... Am I right in thinking the operation of the usb port got overloaded - in that usbCPort != otherUSBCPort - bleugh.

Missing error correction is what drives me nuts.

Backing up 2TB of data to a USB drive shouldn't give a bit error after transferring 1TB successfully.

Well I actually really love it… I’m an amateur with electronics but my latest designs using USB-C has made it possible to have a string of multi color leds connected and not worry about whether the port is for input or output which IMO is totally cool from a setup… in this way I’m using usb wires but it’s not a serial connection…

It's an improvement over a world of micro and mini USB, DisplayPort + HDMI, and proprietary chargers. The eleven different types of cables with no consistent labeling is a drag. I think with better software on the devices and some sane labeling, we're not that far off.

I certainly do.

I've had to put labels on cables, because I now have amassed so many, it's impossible to tell which one:

- provides power (and nothing else) to my portable monitor

- charges my phone and does USB data sync

- charges my wireless headphones (doesn't power monitor, doesn't do USB sync)

I never had these issues with Micro - USB.

I would prefer a new version of USB that guarantees total compatibility with all devices. It's very annoying to realize that your charging USB-C cable is not capable of 10Gbps, or that your 10Gbps cable cannot support 100W charging.

I feel the irritations, but for the most part, I find the right cable and device combos and then I'm good to go. It's still a vast improvement over the previous status quo of micro-USB charging and many more cable types.

USB-C for monitors is a joke. The connection is so fragile, it constantly drops out of the monitor, or gets knocked out of my desktop. I'll take HDMI or DisplayPort over that any day.

It was an improvement, but until it does away with the fiddly, breakable tabs and introduces magsafe-type coupling, it isn't what it should be.

There are adapters, but it needs to be standard.

It'd be great if the spec mandates some color coding.

There are improvements, many, in terms of power and the fact that it can be inserted either way... but dongles and adapters for USB-A devices is a PITA.

My favorite thing is a wireless charger with a usb-c port that cannot be powered by a usb-c brick. It was the expesive option too.

I've never seen USB-C cable or device.

I mostly treat it as "finally less chargers to carry". Does that quite well, don't really need more.

It's reversible, which is great.

This is absolutely very true and a welcome improvement. I'm not saying USB-C is all bad but generally, in my experience, being able to insert the cable without regard to orientation is a tiny improvement when compared to the issues I've experienced.

I'd rather have relatively high confidence that once inserted it would generally work and stay working.

USB-o will be an improvement... the ROUND USB Connector....

It’s symmetrical. Enough of an upgrade for me.

The standard is a mess. I love the connector.

Long live 2015 Macbook Pro!

I've never had a problem with USB-C other than using very cheap cables that break.

I thought I read Apple invented USB-C then abandoned it for the lightning connector and made the USB-C IP freely available to everyone.

Now you can see why.

You didn't even mention the physical fragilities. The cables don't last, but the connectors on cheap laptops/electronics REALLY don't last. The thin pcb inside always cracks or shorts or gets covered with goo. Once it gets jiggly, something shorts and blows up the USB chips inside.

They need a USB-D that is more Lightning-like.

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