

Hands on with USB Type C: Reversible USB Connectors - zdw
http://www.anandtech.com/show/8518/hands-on-with-usb-type-c-reversible-usb-connectors

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Someone1234
This is definitely a step in the right direction (ref: reversible) but it
still looks quite fiddly. Like micro-USB. A tight tiny connection within which
the plug has to be perfectly face-on to get it in.

That's one area where Apple's Lightning design doesn't get enough credit. The
socket on Lightning is larger than the thing you're plugging into it, so if
you're slightly misaligned no problem, and you can definitely plug it in
without looking.

Micro-USB has an on-going issue with the plugs breaking when people fiddle
about trying to get them into an almost identically sized socket. Seems like
that is something the 3.1/USB-C standard could have attempted to solve.

Having the socket act like a funnel to guide the connector in just makes
rational sense. You still get a good solid connection at the end but it is a
LOT easier to plug A into B without looking.

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notatoad
>Micro-USB has an on-going issue with the plugs breaking

i believe this was actually one of the design goals of Micro-USB, and the
reason it replaced mini-usb. People treat their devices terribly, and the end
of a cable sticking out of a device gets a lot of force put on it. Mini-USB
was designed to be tough enough to handle this, and was a pretty robust
connector, however the devices that OEMs were integrating Mini-USB ports into
weren't necessarily built to a high standard. So people torque their cables
and break things inside their devices. Better to break a $6 cable than a $100+
device.

Apple can get away with a strong connector on lightning cables because they
can make sure that the internal connector is correspondingly well-built. The
USB forum doesn't have that control.

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blisterpeanuts
Reversible, at last! But why not make it a shallow, magnetic end piece similar
to Apple's newest laptop power connectors? You just push the end of the cable
close to the socket and it pops into place. Rock it up or down to detach it.
That's the way it ought to work -- non-intrusive, break-resistant, and dead
simple. Easier for sight-impaired people (or all the rest of us who are
suffering near vision damage from too much device usage!)

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ferongr
I can imagine trying to keep a magnetic connector in place while using the
device in the bed (with all the connector nudging and cable stretching that
entails) annoying.

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benologist
It's actually really nice not just for plugging it in but _because_ it pops
out instead of stressing or breaking your cable / device.

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suvelx
Does having a PCI-E tunnel mean we might see high-resolution USB 3.1 docks
that aren't stuck with proprietary, encrypted, DisplayLink protocols, and
thus, open source support?

Because I'd sure love that.

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Kayou
But before that, does having a PCI-E tunnel mean that you have to turn off the
USB protocol? Or can you use both at the same time? How many pins are
necessary to transmit a basic (no power, just data) PCI-E 1x? And 4x, which
would be the minimum viable for gaming? I'm interested to know more about this
PCI-E tunnel thing.

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awonga
This is amazing! It's good to see USB technology keeping step with storage
speeds. Imagine putting a SSD in a 3.1 enclosure.

~~~
Kayou
Also, no more external power required for external 3.5" HDD! It can provide
12V.

