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Comment by bastawhiz | Hacker News Reader

Is there a reason (other than design by committee) that USB is so complicated? You need to have the right kinds of connectors, cables, and device support. The speeds you get vary for any number of reasons. Why didn't someone just say "all the cables are fast and charge good and if you want slow or bad, use old USB"? It seems we've found the worst possible situation, where consumers don't understand what they need or can use or why, and instead of making it easier, we get the second version of the fourth version which has multiple versions that all do different things under different circumstances.

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The reason is $$$

Unfortunately, USB has more features than USB manufactures want to support. So, the end result is a bunch of those features are optional. That complicates everything. Is this a USB-C cable that can support PD 3.1? Who knows! Because, not all USB-C cables NEED to support PD 3.1, some of them just need to transmit data at USB 2.0 speeds. Those can be made super cheap.

This is especially bad when talking about things like devices. Sure, every device now-a-days has the USB-C connector, but does your phone really need to be capable of doing 80gbps on that port? Nope, so it's optional. (and would be sold, rightly so, as a power saving measure).

Every USB feature has a fast, cheap, low power tradeoff going on and the standard allows for you to mix and match features to your heart's content.

> Unfortunately, USB has more features than USB manufactures want to support.

It's not necessarily about 'wanting'. Manufacturers have to hit certain price points, otherwise they lose business to the competition that does.

Yes, it's about dollars. But mostly consumers' dollars.

> That complicates everything. Is this a USB-C cable that can support PD 3.1? Who knows! Because, not all USB-C cables NEED to support PD 3.1, some of them just need to transmit data at USB 2.0 speeds. Those can be made super cheap.

Assuming you just mean the higher power levels, I'd say that's one of the most minimal issues. Every cable supports at least 60 watts, and you rarely need to consider it.

Certified Thunderbolt 4 called are available and the fastest and most compatible you can get.

Expensive but reliable.

I don't understand all this hate for USB. Sure the labeling could be better but having a standard that is basically back compatible all the way to the nineties and now a single multipurpose port for charging/storage/displays/devices is a nice feat.

Thunderbolt adopting USB-C was definitely a clever move for both Thunderbolt and USB. Thunderbolt now effectively becomes a high-end branding for USB while being fully compatible for lower end devices. You're willing to pay more money for simplicity? Go for Thunberbolt. You wanna get an idea for how the next-gen USB will look like? Go for Thunberbolt.

> high-end branding for USB while being fully compatible for lower end devices

But TB4 will not support USB3.2 2x2?

I believe TB4 cables at least are required to be compatible with USB3.2 gen2 x2, but ports aren't (Apple laptops are not compatible apparently).

Lmao, is this true? What an absolute joke.

And USB4 neither. Sigh. Just got an 2x2 WD SSD drive.

Exactly. Yes.

I'd also just say this is a low information environment. Traditionally, we'd rely on the media as a line of defense. Product reviews would tell us who to trust, what the good deals are. We trusted the media to review & find problems & surface issues in the past. But those institutions have undergone enormous revenue crunch, and there's very few left who can really go in depth & do the deep, thorough, intelligent exploration we ought trust them for. Online marketplaces in the world today are bedlam, and there are few trusted authorities. This is a general world condition, but with tech it's extra bad because when things don't work, we almost ever know why/who to blame, it's all just frustrating wizard-shit that's broken & not going, & we are left bereft utterly impotent in the face of these high tech system's mysterious failures.

Honestly, I'd prefer not paying for USB-IF certification on my cables, and I don't care that none of the official logos designating certain compliances are met are embossed on my cables. But I also am a geek who will go spend 3 hours to find Benson (alas no longer active) or Linus's in-depth tech reviews[1], and who doesn't mind trying some cables (buy a couple different ones at a time), finding some not working, & returning those, to save a couple bucks at some hassle. For most people: just buy certified gear.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vn2vdQZhs0w https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/e/2PACX-1vQ1maB_K91Aw...

Ok but it is kind of ridiculous that we have to solve the whole "lack of trust in institutions and the media" and also "unreliable global supply chain" problems -- very real things we should be working on, sure -- in order to make sure our laptops charge at full speed reliably, right?

> having a standard that is basically back compatible all the way to the nineties

My brand new 2TB SSD with USB3.2 2x2 (20Gbps) is not supported by anything I have today, and looks like is not supported by USB4 (and TB4).

If you're trying to mandate the highest requirements for all manufacturers, then they're going to either not build or not conform simply because it's too expensive. This is an unfortunate consequence of being the universal standard; it's even worse if manufacturers decide to ignore the standard so you gotta try embrace them.

I wonder if maybe there was more consolidation if volumes of scale would allow for more fully featured defaults.

Yes, I think iPhone moving to USB-C will make a dent. Currently, nearly half of the mobile ecosystem doesn't work with USB very well and a large portion of them represents a high-end segment which the recent USB standards target for. Also Apple will produce hundreds of millions of high quality USB cables which will help economies of scale.

There is no reason they make the transfer speeds as hard to read/decipher as possible. However there is a reason that features are separated. These do cost money in implementation in regards to the cable, the host, and client.

But we make the up front cost trade-off at the expense of nothing working right. People buy cables or chargers that don't support the right level of charging. Cables work with some monitors but not others. Instead of paying extra for things that just work, we end up paying for impossible-to-distinguish hardware that may or may not work because of some flavor of the spec that doesn't work with the other piece of hardware you're trying to connect it to. A lot of that ends up being instant trash. Genuine, good hardware that is just incompatible is indistinguishable from badly made hardware: to the consumer they both don't work. And so we end up with waste and frustration in the name of saving a few bucks.

The charging situation isn't their fault. USB wasn't designed for it. Non-compliant devices started allowing charging before it was ever permitted. Then they added PD but nobody supported it and manufacturers cooked up their own ad hoc systems to detect a charger.

> The charging situation isn't their fault. USB wasn't designed for it. Non-compliant devices started allowing charging before it was ever permitted.

A standards body at least shares some fault when they move so slowly that real solutions have to work ahead of them to provide a demanded feature and things end up in a mess like this.

I don't know what you're talking about, everybody uses PD these days.

PD predates USB 3. Nobody supported it until it became integrated into modern USB controllers. Prior to that there were janky manufacturer specific resistor combinations used to signal the presence of a charger.

Because if you're selling a computer, and it has a USB 2 port, you don't want your spec sheet saying "USB 2" while others have "USB 3", but it's hard to upgrade your stuff mid-cycle, so you get "USB 3.1" to be defined as "USB 2" so you can look at least competitive.

USB 3.1 is like 10Gbps, though?

I think that's only USB 3.1 Rev2, but don't quote me on that.

Neither is true. Because those are document generation numbers being used as marketting terms by the product manufacturers.

USB-IF should refuse to certify manufactured products that doesn't use the marketing terms that do include the actual speed. But it is funded by those manufacturers so they do whatever they want to confuse and trap consumers.

USB wants to appeal to everyone, and like HDMI is ready to discount themselves (by using 'optional' capabilities) as hard as it takes to appease their members. This is why you can buy a USB device or cable for $1 — and why those devices are a compatibility nightmare. (The dollar amounts are higher for HDMI, but the same problem applies.)

Thunderbolt wants to appeal to "quality at a premium" and does not offer optional capabilities. This is why you can buy any Thunderbolt cable and use any Thunderbolt device — and why cheap devices decline to certify for Thunderbolt.

Then you buy a thunderbolt dock, and your mouse and keyboard stutter because of mutually incompatible bugs between the bios, the thunderbolt chipset and the USB chipset.

Implementation defects exist in USB, HDMI, Thunderbolt, Ethernet, Wi-Fi, and exist in all protocols.

Thunderbolt considerably reduces the defect surface for certified implementations when compared to USB and HDMI, by reducing the number of optionals for cables and implementors to zero.

That does not imply zero defects in use. It implies fewer defects in use. And invisibly-damaged cables are still the bane of all of us.

Pretty much every combination of laptop and thunderbolt dock I've tried in the last 6 years has been a mediocre, buggy experience. I've personally tried 4 docks across 3 different laptops.

I got a 2nd work laptop just so that one can sit permanently docked, never unplugged or power cycled. Every once in a while I have to get docker running on it, which is also a miserable experience, but that's not related to thunderbolt!

> Why didn't someone just say "all the cables are fast and charge good and if you want slow or bad, use old USB"?

Part of the problem is that making fast cables is expensive, and manufacturers will skimp on that expense to save money.

It's not even just that it's expensive: if you look at a cable that's full-everything including top-rating for power delivery, it's a pretty thick inflexible thing and not at all what you want for e.g. a mouse or a keyboard or whatever.

This isn't even new. Even USB 3.0 (the first gen, later rebranded as USB 3.1) micro-B to A cable, which has been around for at least 10 years at this point, is already not good for mouse. Nor is my USB-C 2.0 with 60W PD cable.

Which is fine. There's plenty of devices I own that just need a charging cable. But it's near impossible to know what cable does what. Even some of the expensive ones I've bought don't do what they say.

You would think with how much money is pumped into the governing body of the standard they could both force classifications of cables/devices and also verify they actually do what's advertised.

Every company using USB-C needs to pay $3500 USD to use the branding and a proper vendor ID. Every single company. And yet they still can't solve the very basics.

But then why make them USBv4? Just make v3 cables. Has it truly been politicized by the industry to add so much complexity so crappy manufacturers can sell bad cables/hardware with the latest version number instead of just making stuff that consumers can use?

But they can just continue making old USB2 cables

Nobody would buy their old USB2 cables when they can get other faster cables, so the manufacturers of the old cables would actually rather pump money into politically pressuring the relevant standards committee into 'massaging' their latest technical definitions to include products which already exist.

People buy USB2 cables all the time, and they're usually correctly labeled too.

But there's no profit to be made when everything new uses USB-C now.

Usb-c runs usb 2.0 just fine! And yet we still have companies trying to make bad USBv(n+2)

I'm really starting to think this is absolutely on purpose. Clear versioning would make all cables/accessories instantly outdated/undesirable whenever the new generation starts to show up. Unclear, obfuscated versioning is used to dampen this effect - for most purposes the older cables are "good enough" anyway, and when not, the user will make another buy. Same thing with HDMI or WiFi.

> all the cables are fast

Wouldn't that be massively expensive? I don't need my charging able to cost that much.

Sure, then have a charging flavor and a data flavor. Put a special little logo on the connectors. Why do we need such a complicated spectrum of things that plug into each other but don't work well for data or power?

The spectrum of cables is not really that wide. The problem is that almost none of them are labeled.

Please send me the number of your dealer.

> Sure, then have a charging flavor and a data flavor.

Well that's what they do - and then an X flavour and a Y flavour, etc, and that's how we ended up where we are.

> Put a special little logo on the connectors.

We absolutely don't do this. All my USB-C connector cables look identical, it's utter madness.

I've found that the good cables that I've got all have a PD wattage label at least. Except for the Apple cables, but I can recognize those on sight and I'm not buying USB-C cables I could confuse for then.

Yeah we didn't do the icon part. But the original comment said make them all the same, then we figured out why that's not practical.

If I'm going to waste a 120 Gbps multipurpose port on charging, I want to do it with style.

people who say this haven't had to work with serial devices lately.

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