USB-C Was Supposed to Simplify Our Lives. Instead, It’s a Total Mess

[JSWolf]

https://onezero.medium.com/usb-c-was...s-626bb2ea3688

USB-C Was Supposed to Simplify Our Lives. Instead, It’s a Total Mess.

Techies hailed USB-C as the future of cables when it hit the mainstream market with Apple’s single-port MacBook in 2015. It was a huge improvement over the previous generation of USB, allowing for many different types of functionality — charging, connecting to an external display, etc. — in one simple cord, all without having a “right side up” like its predecessor.

Five years later, USB-C is near-ubiquitous: Almost every modern laptop and smartphone has at least one USB-C port, with the exception of the iPhone, which still uses Apple’s proprietary Lightning port. For all its improvements, USB-C has become a mess of tangled standards — a nightmare for consumers to navigate despite the initial promise of simplicity.

[Bookstooge]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

https://onezero.medium.com/usb-c-was...s-626bb2ea3688

My life is just fine. Why are you so uptight about it? Do you need more fibre in your diet?

[ZodWallop]

There's this part of the article, I assume it's what made you share it?

I’m thankful that USB-C is becoming universal, slowly pushing us toward a future where we have a single standardized connector for everything.

[Ken Maltby]

Originally Posted by Bookstooge

My life is just fine. Why are you so uptight about it? Do you need more fibre in your diet?

That might be one of the better explanations for "JSWolf"'s reactive posting here on MR, that I've heard. You get used to it.

Luck;
Ken

[Bookstooge]

Originally Posted by Ken Maltby

That might be one of the better explanations for "JSWolf"'s reactive posting here on MR, that I've heard. You get used to it.

Luck;
Ken

I didn't join for YEARS because of his posting. It took a fantastic plugin for calibre that I really appreciated to get me to join and I'm beginning to wonder if it was worth it.

[cfrizz]

That is what the ignore list is for. Once done you are free unless someone quotes him. I like this site, and I'm certainly not going to let anyone keep me from enjoying all the informative info I find on here.

[darryl]

I think USB C is great. Not perfect, but much better than the old standards.

As for the OP? His posts can be annoying at times but he is also quick to provide help to others who need it, and there is often value in his posts. Overall, I think his participation is a positive for Mobileread. I endorse cfrizz's very sensible comment above. I use the ignore list very sparingly indeed but find my Mobileread experience much better after ignoring a handful of posters. The OP is not one of them.

[rcentros]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

https://onezero.medium.com/usb-c-was...s-626bb2ea3688

One port, many dongles. Looks like a sow with a litter of suckling piglets attached. Be sure to bring along the "litter" of adapters if you actually want to interact with anything.

https://www.amazon.com/Adapter-Charg...0482468&sr=8-4

[Ridcully]

This is the usual tech cycle since the 80s :-/ People get mad at being scammed into buying new adapters/peripherals/software for each brand or even each product model. Governments or monopolies create a standard and people are happy for a while. But eventually companies figure out a way to make standard-compliant yet incompatible accessories and we're back to square one.

[Quoth]

"Almost every modern laptop and smartphone has at least one USB-C port"
Actually not true. Only high end laptops and some brands and a minority of phones because it costs more and needs an extra chip in most gadgets. Many SoC as cheap even as 50 c have built-in USB, but only the actual USB. USB-C includes three other systems.

However the problem is not really the cable, except it's too small a connector for all the signals.

Also the up to 100W and 20V part was included to charge laptops, but some take more than 100W and a 100W charger is overkill and wasteful and larger than needed for a gadget, phone or tablet (typically 0.5W to 7.5W).

A recent industry report (not retail media) said apart from certain makes of laptops the takeup of USB-C has been disappointing. It's because most phones, many tablets and all lesser gadgets don't need the extra hardware expense and software complexity.

It should have been called something else.

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by darryl

I think USB C is great. Not perfect, but much better than the old standards.

It's complementary rather than a replacement. There are lots of things where it's a massive overkill. It can't be better because actually it's simply including USB signally as two of its many wires.

[JSWolf]

The problem as pointed out is that we have all kinds of different USB-C ports with all kinds of different abilities. So it's hard to know at times what a given port can or cannot do.

[Thasaidon]

Originally Posted by cfrizz

That is what the ignore list is for. Once done you are free unless someone quotes him. I like this site, and I'm certainly not going to let anyone keep me from enjoying all the informative info I find on here.

Hear! Hear!

I have my disagreements with Jon but there are far worse out there. Believe me.

[j.p.s]

I'm sure at least some of you remember the pre PS/2 (which introduced the DB-9 connector) serial port good old days, where "all" you had to know were the bit rate, number of data bits, number of start bits, number of stop bits, hardware or software flow control, and whether you needed to use a straight through or null-modem cable and which type cable a given cable was. Oh, and whether power on one of those pins was necessary or a guarantee of magic smoke. A set of gender adapters were good to keep around. We won't consider all the reasons 25 (or even 9) wires were needed for a "serial" port.

Wild cards were cables that omitted "unused" wires (including various flow control or modem specific lines) and proprietary hijacking of "unused" pins. Not using those special cables when needed or using them when they weren't could lead to all kinds of puzzlements.

The arrival of the 9 pin serial port not only required the duplication of all the hardware above, but a set of 25 pin to 9 pin adapters with all possible gender combinations.

But, since you already had to know what you were doing and had all the necessary equipment, it was no big deal to use a device as either a peripheral or a host, something it took a long time for USB to sorta kinda get right.

[DrNefario]

There are too many standards. What we need is another one.