Comment by faller | Hacker News Reader

Comment by faller | Hacker News Reader

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> You keep dancing around my arguments.

No, not really. Feel free to point out exactly which argument you feel was ignored.

> The issue isn't that things have changed; it's that they've changed in a way that makes things confusing for consumers.

That seems to be the source of your confusion: nothing has changed. Each USB spec is backwards compatible and specifies the same data transfer modes.

And there is no confusion: if you pick up a USB2 data storage device you know beforehand it won't support SuperSpeed. If you pick up a USB3.0 device you know beforehand it won't support SuperSpeed+. If you pick up a USB3.1 device you know beforehand it won't support SuperSpeed+ 2x or 4x.

The whole point of the submission is to call out that M1 macs don't support USB3.1 unlike the new Mac Studio.

The article also clearly states that Apple doesn't actually advertise USB3.1, just USB3.

> Feel free to point out exactly which argument you feel was ignored.

The retroactive renaming of speed+versions. I'm not talking about the Mac.

> If you pick up a USB3.1 device you know beforehand it won't support SuperSpeed+ 2x or 4x.

My whole argument is that this confusion wouldn't be an issue if the USB Consortium had reserved USB 3.1 for 10 Gb/sec speeds exclusively. In other words, this:

    3.0: 5 Gb/s  "SuperSpeed"
    3.1: 10 Gb/s "SuperSpeed+"
    3.2: 20 Gb/s "SuperSpeed++"

That, and that alone (with none of the "Gen" nonsense) would avoid confusion. Then, if I pick up a USB 3.1 device, I would know it's 10 Gb/sec "SuperSpeed+" without having to use a stupid "generation" number. But no, the USB Consortium decided to deprecate 3.0 and 3.1 because all new devices are "3.2 Gen whatever". That's confusion.

Versions are not speeds.

3.2 continues to describe everything in 3.0, which means it continues to describe how to make devices supporting 5 gbps over USB-A/B

Well, the argument is that versions not being speeds anymore is the problem and it would've been easier if they were. Like they are in Wi-Fi for example.

If you use the smallest version number that fits your device, then you avoid confusion.

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