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Comment by twoparachute45 | Hacker News Reader

It would be comical if it weren't so ridiculous. The standards group is surely aware of how ridiculous it is, yet they keep coming up with these idiotic names, and then try to defend it by saying "its only the technical name, not the marketing name", as if that matters.

They honestly just need to kill off USB at this point and just let Thunderbolt supersede it. Thunderbolt 4 and 5 are literally just implementations of USB4, except the Thunderbolt standards group is doing a hell of a lot better job at naming things and certifying cables than the USB group is.

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Regarding Thunderbolt, I don't even bother buying USB-C cables anymore for anything important.

If it's in my backpack or used for a dock/monitor, it's going to be a Thunderbolt cable.

Expensive? Absolutely. Unnecessary? Almost certainly. But I haven't had any issues with them whatsoever.

I've been using USB cables since they exist, and I had never any "issues" with them.

The only "issue" I had, was that you often ended up without the proper one when you needed it. Almost all the cables came with the device which needed it. Only bought 2 which were longer.

What issues do you experience so frequently that it would justify investing more money into it?

You answered your own question:

Q: What issues do you experience so frequently that it would justify investing more money into it?

A: ... often ended up without the proper one when you needed it

That's precisely the issue GP solves by only carrying one type of cable, Thunderbolt. If you want to transfer data at top speed, render high resolution high refresh rate video, or charge at maximum wattage, TB4 handles it. One cable to rule them all, no surprises.

It rules them all, only if you are on a Mac yourself and have a Thunderbold cable.

If you are on anything different and want to hook up, say a Studio Display, you can't use USB-C (below 4) and that is not USB-IFs fault.

Besides that, what I meant was the connector standards mix before USB-C has become mandatory here, and I think you knew that. Other than that, all what you wrote is also determined by the devices connected, so this may be why most of the people out there don't even realize there might be a reason to buy Thunderbold.

I don't think you thought your statement through. What you're proposing is a massive mandatory price hike on all hardware just because you're slightly annoyed by naming.

There's no mandatory price hike required. Thunderbolt is royalty-free as of several years ago, and at this point USB4 pretty much _is_, at minimum, Thunderbolt 3. For example USB4 hubs are, per spec, required to be TB3 compatible, so I don't know why we would bother marketing them as "USB4 v1.0 / USB4 SuperSpeed++ / USB4 20 Gbps / USB 3.1 Gen2x2" when instead they can just be marketed as Thunderbolt 3 or 4.

True but due to lack of slow speed fallback it requires active signal conditioning electronics in every cable and the required interfaces on the client side are also way more expensive in peripherals. A simple mouse would cost $100 instead of $10 for no reason, it'll never need thunderbolt speeds.

Nobody is going to pay for a 40Gbps Thunderbolt cable to plug in their keyboard

Or ten for $1 off <your preferred Chinese marketplace>

Data rate between 10MB/s and 2 Gb/s.

Irrelevant for charging.

This kind of cheap cable won't fast charge in any case. Add a few dollars if you want that.

I hope I don't come off sounding like a twit, but does fast charging really matter all that much to people? I've had a few fast charge cables before, and although it's fine to have my cellphone fully charged in say, 20 minutes, it doesn't really mean anything to me, given that it will be left plugged in over night regardless.

Perhaps it's more useful to people who are constantly traveling, but for someone who isn't, I guess I just don't see a point in it. Would I turn it down? No. Would I pay more for it? If it's greater than 2$ more, no. Slow charge is "good enough" in my eyes.

Laptops need the additional power that fast charge can deliver to run/charge.

I was frustrated all day because I couldn't find my fast charging cable and just couldn't leave the phone plugged for more than 15-20 minutes at a time due to various activities, which also required a lot of battery charge (photo/video shooting), so I was dancing around the charger all day...

I really value fast charging. Normally I turn it off because I do charge my phone at night. But sometimes I really need the boost and it's great that it can do so if needed. Especially because i normally limit my phone to 80%.

I don't use it a lot, probably once a month on average. But the times I do it's invaluable.

Isn’t slower charging better for the battery too?

The problem with fast charging and batteries is overheating, and more frequent overcharging. It's possible to fast charge in entirely safe, non-damaging ranges.

It's very important to me. I keep forgetting to plug it in at night and then I can just charge it for 30 minutes before I leave the house and can get a couple of hours usage into it, which is normally enough.

I never charge my phone overnight. My charger is on my desk. I'll typically do a slow charge, but I'll do a fast charge in some circumstances (e.g. when I'm going somewhere soon but my battery is low).

Pricing aside, thunderbolt cables are usually thicker and more rigid. Sometimes you need a thin and flexible cable, cheap USB-C cable is a better choice.

And truly lightweight cables, for slow overnight charging (or for charging of small batteries, e.g. smartwatch scale) have all but disappeared with the shift from A/micro-B to C/C. It's awesome that we have near-universal connector for that wide a range of use cases, but that requires some learning about cable classes beyond the old "does the connector fit?" and that learning process is not over yet. And by learning I don't just mean us memorizing classes, but also an effective narrowing of classes, e.g. no more almost but not quite TB4 compliant ones.

Though poor cables do drop the voltage a bit I feel that the proper approach would be to to just use a weak charger. They are "all" USB-A and there are no lack of USB-A -> C cables.

I'm holding a thin USB-C Samsung cable right now.

USB4 is required to support Thunderbolt, and USB4 cables are similar to Thunderbolt in their price and thickness, so this problem already exists, just with shittier naming conventions.

Basically for any cheap use cases, you just have to buy a random "USB-C" cable with unknown capabilities, while for specific data use cases you have to buy a "USB-C" cable that also supports a specific data rate, either USB 3.1, USB 3.2, USB4 v1.0, USB4 v2.0, or Thunderbolt 3/4/5 (and most cables will support multiple of these, for example USB 3.2 Gen2x2 is the same speed as USB4 v1.0 and TB3).

> yet they keep coming up with these idiotic names, and then try to defend it by saying "its only the technical name, not the marketing name", as if that matters.

I think it matters a great deal, but not as they or you intend. Having technical and marketing terms sucks! I use Ubuntu on my home server. And whenever I need to troubleshoot some issues with packages or want to upgrade to a later release I am confronted with those awful names. I DONT KNOW WHAT JAMMY IS! JUST CALL IT 22.04, 22.10, 23.04, 24.04.......! I don't want to memorize random names and remember when they where released. And name your apt repos in the same version scheme goddamnit!

Same with USB! Just give it a sensible name and stop changing it for marketing reasons. Such a effing stupid thing to do!

Agreed. It's fine as a technical name but the consumer name doesn't seem to catch on or even be referenced most of the time. I'm still having difficulty with component manufacturers saying "usb 3.2" which was far as I can tell is 1x5, 2x5, 1x10, or 2x10. Plot twist it's always the slowest one but still, the standards body could've done that better.

Disagree on the replacement with thunderbolt, though. USB historically is very different, and it's USB4 that's a clone of TB3. Agreed the naming is better but a lot of micros have USB and thunderbolt would be ridiculous for them.

How are they better with the same meaningless 4 and 5?

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