
Hands-on with the USB Type-C plug - mmastrac
http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2014/09/reversible-tiny-faster-hands-on-with-the-usb-type-c-plug/ 
======
cantrevealname
USB started out as a nice clean interface at least far as the cabling was
concerned. Originally it had just two kinds of plugs ("A" and "B").

But the number of USB connector types is getting out of control. I'm sure
there are good technical reasons as to why they couldn't re-use the same
connectors for higher-speeds and greater power, but in some cases the changes
_do_ seem gratuitous.

For example, introducing a mini-USB connector and then micro-USB seems to have
been poorly planned. The connectors are similar-looking and so close in size
that it causes endless confusion. I don't understand why they couldn't have
standardized on either the mini or the micro instead of having both.

~~~
JoshTriplett
USB type C is actually an effort to fix that across the board: the cable can
be symmetric (C on both ends), all type C ports have the equivalent of on-the-
go support, it's as small as micro-B so thin devices can use it, and it
supports fast charging with enough power for a laptop.

Hopefully, new devices will have _only_ USB type C ports and nothing else.

~~~
tantalor
[http://xkcd.com/927/](http://xkcd.com/927/)

~~~
bronson
Downvoted because enough is enough! The "14 competing standards" comic was
really funny the first few hundred times it was snarked into HN comments.

~~~
nobrains
But this time it fits perfectly.

~~~
bronson
No, to fit perfectly, the type C plug would have been invented to cover the
use cases of all of the the previous plugs.

That was not the motivation.

------
mmastrac
One of the other cool features of USB C is "alternate modes", where two sides
can negotiate a handoff of some of the lanes to things like DisplayPort:

[http://www.anandtech.com/show/8558/displayport-alternate-
mod...](http://www.anandtech.com/show/8558/displayport-alternate-mode-for-usb-
typec-announced)

~~~
xorcist
I did not know that. This is seriously cool. Power, data, and video over that
one cable. It's going to enable one universal way to dock your laptop,
directly into your screen. It's what Thunderbolt could have been, if it was
cheaper and could carry power.

~~~
7952
All I really want is an analog audio lane for audio to replace 3.5mm jacks.

~~~
xorcist
Why analog? There is audio in the Displayport stream, and there is no reason
your screen couldn't hook up a USB DAC as well. Your headphones could go right
into your screen, if that's what you want to accomplish.

------
drcode
I'm not an expert on creating reliable electronics, but the new iOS connector
is just a "tongue", whereas this new type-c connector is a "hole" that accepts
a "tongue", and the plug the type-c connector fits in is a "tongue" that
accepts a "hole" that contains a "tongue" (sorry for the simplistic
terminology)

Surely, this is going lead to a whole new generation of loose, flaky cable
connections, just as with the previous USB connectors (and unlike the new iOS
connectors, which never seem to lead to loose connections)

~~~
blackguardx
The Lightning connector design exposes all the pins to the hazards of the
world (the most dangerous being ESD, pin shorting being another). In order to
make the industrial design work electrically, Apple had to put a tiny chip
inside each lightning connector. This chip also handles switching around which
side of the connector is active.

As you can imagine, embedding a chip inside a connector is pretty expensive.
The USB-IF doesn't actually make hardware. They create standards that other
companies can use to make hardware. It would be crazy for them to spec
something out that requires the kind of NRE that Apple must have paid to
produce their connector.

The USB-IF gets around the ugly pin shorting and ESD problems by simply
adopting the same connector design that every other connector uses. They hide
the pins behind a shroud so that fingers and other objects can't reach in to
short anything out or cause ESD events.

~~~
hyperbovine
That must be why I have three lightning cables which I use daily, and about 80
USB cables (one with each new device!) which sit in a pile collecting dust and
tangling up the cat. Seriously, do we really need the price of usb cables
tending asymptotically to zero? "Three cables should be enough for anybody."

~~~
nodata
Tell that to someone who buys a printer.

------
sauere
I could care less that it is now reversible. Yes it was annoying, but having
to keep 4++ different cable types, adapters and all is just as annoying.

What bothers me more is the durability of the pins. The contact surface wears
out rather quickly, especially on the now prominent micro-USB connectors,
leading to unstable, shaky connections.

~~~
lmm
One of the design points of micro-USB was to put the moving parts in the
cable, so it should be the cable that wears out rather than the device
connector, and those are cheap to replace.

------
bluthru
Why didn't they just copy Apple's Lightning design?

~~~
Sanddancer
There are enough similarities in purpose, and enough differences in
functionality -- USB C has an additional differential signal pair, etc -- that
having the designs be similar would only cause confusion. Additionally,
Lightning's patented, so making things close in design would require paying
royalties to Apple.

~~~
bborud
Fantastic. Because making a flat bit of plastic and metal that goes into
another bit of plastic and metal constitutes "intellectual property", the
world will be stuck with a crap design for another 10-20 years.

This is the sort of stuff that ensures eventual aliens will say "let's not go
to earth for it is a silly place".

------
pistle
Where's the mini-C and micro-C? _throws away a pile of USB cables_

Are small-run PCB fabs ready to punch all those mid-mount cutouts? I'm
scratching my head about the mid-mount.

~~~
JoshTriplett
> Where's the mini-C and micro-C?

Eternally non-existent, since C is the size of micro-B, small enough for
ridiculously thin phones and tablets.

------
dgreensp
Very, very cool!

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computator
Somewhat meta to the article, but isn't it interesting that there is only one
English word for a male connector (i.e., plug), but numerous names for a
female connector (jack, receptacle, outlet, socket, slot).

~~~
moreati
I consider jack to refer to the male connector, e.g. 3.5 mm jack means the
plug on a pair of headphones. Interesting that it's not universal.

~~~
smorrow
And so you should, because that's what it originally referred to: jack is
short for jackknife.

------
bborud
Did they purposefully go out of their way not to copy the Apple Lightning
connector? Because this design is just stupid.

~~~
makomk
Apple's Lightning connector isn't capable of most of the things that USB C
does. It doesn't support anything faster than USB 2, doesn't even have enough
pins to support USB 3 or DisplayPort let alone both at the same time, can only
deliver a fraction of the power, etcera. In some ways it was actually less
capable than Apple's old 30-pin dock connector.

