
USB Type-C is still a mess - kissickas
https://www.androidauthority.com/state-of-usb-type-c-870996/
======
exmadscientist
Speaking as someone in the industry who's worked on Type C-enabled gadgets,
half the bloody problem is that the Type C products offered by the major
semiconductor companies are _terrible_.

For sake of a simple example, consider designing a rechargeable flashlight.
For whatever reason, you'd like it to be rechargeable over a USB-C port. You
also want the flashlight to charge as fast as possible from whatever power
source you connect it to, because you know people will need to charge it
quickly. To do that, the ideal solution would be a single IC that sits on the
USB port and monitors D+/D-, CC1/2, and the rail voltages and sets a few GPIOs
to tell your battery charge circuit what is and isn't allowed on this port.

Inexplicably, _that chip doesn't exist_. It does exist for USB 2.0 (that is,
BC1.2), available from several vendors, and works perfectly. There are
solutions marketed for Type-C... but they don't touch USB 2.0. That means
someone who uses a Type-A to Type-C cable with a beefy older Type-A charger
doesn't get fast charging. There are some bigger Type-C products that might
work, but they're incredibly complex, physically large, expensive, often in
BGA packages, and will blow out every line on your budget.

Admittedly it's been about a year since I turned over every stone in the
industry searching for my Magical Unicorn Charging IC (like the ones that
exist for USB 2.0...), but I do pay attention to new product releases and I
haven't seen anyone going in this direction. Probably you could get something
customized (at medium volumes) or certainly full custom (at high volumes), but
if volumes or margins are low enough to require COTS parts, there really
aren't any workable solutions.

I am confident that Type-C's market penetration will skyrocket as soon as the
difficulty and cost of actually integrating it into a product reaches sane
levels.

~~~
vertexFarm
Forgive me for sounding extremely ignorant. I know this is not my area of
specialty and I admit I'm about to sound stupid. I want to admit this right
off the bat.

Can't you just hook up the VCC and ground from any USB charging IC to a type-c
socket? It's all +5v right? I don't understand why the type of connector
dictates how fast a cable should be useful for charging. That seems like it
should be up to the simple gauge and length of the wire and thus how much
current it can handle.

From what I've heard re: that chart in OP's link that shows the different fast
charge rates for different manufacturer's wall warts and cables, most of that
is caused by proprietary ICs doing sneaky things like throttling the charge
rate when it discovers it isn't connected to an official Huawei cable or
whatever through some resistor value going to ground from one of the data
lines, or some similar method. Couldn't the IC in the device read the
resistance / inductance of the cable and determine through that how much
current it could handle? I feel like this is all bad faith shenanigans through
proprietary cable DRM. When charging is concerned, a conductor is a conductor
assuming there's enough thickness to prevent overheating, right?

~~~
theatrus2
Type-C offers charge rates up to 100W, which means the voltage is ramped to
20V.

There is an entire protocol to negotiate power delivery (including who charges
who)
[http://www.usb.org/developers/powerdelivery/](http://www.usb.org/developers/powerdelivery/)

~~~
digi_owl
And the latter part have caught some people unaware, where a battery pack and
a phone will ping pong who is charging who until both are dead.

~~~
chimeracoder
> And the latter part have caught some people unaware, where a battery pack
> and a phone will ping pong who is charging who until both are dead.

Or, if you're really unlucky, it'll attempt to charge your wall. No, I'm not
joking:
[https://twitter.com/chimeracoder/status/941820122406064128](https://twitter.com/chimeracoder/status/941820122406064128)

~~~
organsnyder
My phone has offered that option when I plug into the car. While the car could
in theory benefit from the charge (it's a plug-in hybrid), I doubt the phone
would be able to provide much of value.

------
jrockway
I remember arguing with people when Type-C was new; they told me it would
change the world, I told them it would never work.

The problem is... they made everything optional, and thus when a user sees a
Type-C port, they have no idea what to expect. Will it work with a device that
requires Thunderbolt? Will it drive a DisplayPort monitor? Will this charger
charge their laptop? Will this charger charge their phone?

The answer to any of those questions is "it depends". Many Type C ports do
DisplayPort. Many don't. Many Type C chargers will charge something that needs
5V, but not something that needs a higher voltage. The end result is that you
end up with thousands of devices with the same physical connector that can't
actually operate with each other.

My favorite USB C device is Wacom's Intuos Pro pen tablet thingie. It has 3
Type C ports and needs DisplayPort input, USB 2.0, and 20V power. So there is
not a computer in the world that you can plug it into with one cable, because
I've never seen a computer that can output 20V over Type C. To get around that
it, it has three ports and ships with a power brick... so you have two Type C
cables going into it at a minimum. So close... if only they would accept 5V
power. (I did some measurements and it uses only a tiny amount of power that
is well under what can be supplied with 5V, but they appear to have reused the
power delivery subsystem from their nearly-identical laptops, which do really
need a lot of power to charge the battery.)

I don't see the situation improving. When you have 3 versions of power
delivery and at least 4 "alternate modes" to implement, nobody is ever going
to implement them all. So people will always be connecting Type C peripherals
to Type C computers and being disappointed. And there is no way for the user
to predict what works, because it's not like anyone shares specifications of
what's required ("this monitor needs 20V and DisplayPort Alternate Mode")
("this computer can supply 100W, and implements USB 3.1, DisplayPort Alternate
Mode and HDMI Alternate Mode").

It failed. I look forward to USB Type D that has a more durable connector and
doesn't allow "optional" extensions. Maybe that will work. But for now, it
looks like I will be struggling with upside-down Type A connectors for the
next ten years. Sigh.

~~~
notatoad
"it depends" is a fine answer for whether a device supports something. that's
how USB-A/B worked. you didn't know if the device supported quick charging,
worked at better than USB 1.1 speed, or even if it supported data transfer.
there's lots of power-only USB devices.

But you at least could make a fair assumption that the cable you were trying
to use supported all of that (beyond the rare power-only cables). For me the
real killer with USB-C is the wide variety of cables that all look physically
identical. it's fairly easy to keep track of what features a computer, phone,
or peripheral has. but having to keep track of which features each cable
supports is a huge pain in the ass. It means i can't just have a box of random
USB cables on my shelf, and grab one when i need one.

~~~
jrockway
Quick charging is a little different. You can take any USB phone and plug it
into any USB port and it will try to charge. Maybe slowly, but something will
happen. That is not the case with Type-C alternate modes and power delivery.
If what you're connected to doesn't support what the device needs, it won't
work, and won't tell you why. That is what's annoying. Is it the power
adaptor? Is your device dead? Does it not agree on which alternate modes to
use? Is the cable incompatible? Nobody knows without a $100 debugging device
to sniff out the negotiation packets.

------
chx
My highest score answer on superuser.com is about USB C
[https://superuser.com/a/1200112/41259](https://superuser.com/a/1200112/41259)
and I had this to say after a long list of capabilities:

> They really, really should have provided some way to clarify this mess but
> they didn't. If colors and icons with the big variety and the space
> constrains are not viable then provide a standard way for software to give a
> capability list to the user. Or a diagnostics tool that you can plug into
> USB-C and it gives you a list of "this port can provide signals A, B, C and
> accepts inputs D, E, F".

Given the lack of that when plugging together two USB C sockets and the
results are not satisfactory any of the following might occur:

1\. The signal you want is not provided by the source 2\. The cable is not
capable of carrying the signal you want 3\. The sink can't process the signal
4\. It just doesn't work because of firmware bugs or driver bugs 5\. There
might be interference, there was a Dell problem where lowering wifi signal
strength made Thunderbolt better.

~~~
SOLAR_FIELDS
After reading through this thread, I was thinking something similar to what
you are proposing is the cleanest way forward (except I was thinking numbers
instead of letters). You could even get more clever and use colors, where
complementary colors work together.

Couple that with some error messages that mirror what you wrote in the last
part of your post in software whenever you plugged in a USB-C device to a
connector and I think the standard could be salvaged and even a relative
pleasure to use given the background.

~~~
chx
Out of the five points I wrote only 1 and 3 can be tested via a standard USB C
tester device if it existed. 2 and most especially 5 is fiercely expensive to
test and 4 is well, software bugs (firmware is just software, after all). You
know how that goes.

------
themagician
Maybe it's just me, but I've had zero major issues with USB-C and can't
imagine going back. I spent maybe $100 on new cables so I have one or two of
everything. I only wish they had USB-C hubs so I could drop the USB Type-A
connectors all together.

I honestly find it much easier. The simplicity of just not having to flip he
connector around 3 times every time you plug something in alone is worth it.

It can be a little tricky to figure out what voltages/options are supported,
but this has already gotten much better. This is really just an issue with
manufactures not labeling things. On the cable end I feel like this is
actually already mostly solved. Cable Matters gives pretty good specs for
every cable. It's really device manufactures that kind of leave you in the
dark. I'd venture a guess that if the USB consortium actually created an easy
to use label with some good information architecutre that this problem would
fix itself.

~~~
Tijdreiziger
Who wants to spend $100 on cables?

~~~
franciscop
I wouldn't mind at all if it means I only have to carry ONE cable for all my
devices or risk not using them/paying for a new cable. I got 4 devices, and 4
cables:

\- Smartphone: USB-C

\- Laptop: 12v barrel charger

\- Kindle: micro USB

\- GoPro 3: mini USB

My next laptop will be USB-C charging for sure, so at least the 2 items I use
the most can share a charger.

Now I don't mind so much, but when I was travelling/nomad it'd have made my
life way easier.

~~~
jjrh
For micro and mini there are some adaptor thingies. I bought a few to deal
with the couple of older devices I have with mini.

One probably exists for USB-C so you only need one cable.

------
yathern
I always hear how USB-C is such a mess, and everyone agrees - I just wanted to
quickly provide a counter anecdote. As a user, who knows nothing about the
protocol or the politics or anything else - USB-C works wonderfully for me - I
only wish more devices used it.

My laptop plugs into my monitor, provides more USB ports there, and audio out,
which feeds into speakers. My dinky phone charger can charge my laptop, which
I love. Easier to take around when traveling. No low points for me yet.

~~~
fphhotchips
Ok, so counter-counter point. I was recently in the market for a laptop. The
one I bought has a USB-C port and two USB-A ports. Because it's a Thunderbolt
USB-C Port, it even has a little lightning bolt printed next to it on the
chassis.

Previous laptops I've owned with USB-C could charge over it. This one can't.
The model with the smaller screen can, but not the 15 inch. The slightly
different model can, but not the one with the discrete graphics card.

Why is this? I _assume_ it's because charging the laptop at full utilisation
requires over 100W. But really I have no idea.

~~~
txdv
The lightning bolt really makes me assume that you can use it to charge.

------
MBCook
“Why doesn’t Apple just get rid of Lightning and use USB-C on their iPhones!”

This is why. Ignoring the momentum Lightning had from being a few years older,
this is a great reason not to switch.

Sadly I know this has become a big problem for people on the new Macs. Plug a
USB-C hub in? Now that port doesn’t do Thunderbolt or Display Port. How do you
know that? Trial and error.

Very un-Appley.

~~~
sebazzz
In my experience the connector from Apple is far more reliable than USB C. USB
C is a rounded flat rectangle with a piece of plastic in the center and pins
between, which is small and can easily be damaged. Lightning on the other hand
is a solid metal connector with the pins/contacts on the outside, which is
much more sturdier. Lighting also does a nice "click" when connected.

~~~
caconym_
My experience says the opposite. I don't have an iPhone anymore, but when I
did I was constantly having issues with the Lightning connector not
connecting.

OTOH, all my USB-C devices, quite a few at this point and some I've had for
years, have always worked flawlessly with regard to the port.

Also, all other things being equal, I would rather have the contact springs on
the connector rather than the port so that if they go bad I can just replace
the cable. I suspect this is what kept happening with my Lightning devices.

~~~
mariusz331
This could be because lint built up in your charging port. It happened to me a
few times. The techs at an Apple store can clean it out for free.

------
FooHentai
USB-C has somehow made docking stations take a big backwards step. Which is a
huge shame because we finally got to a good place with USB3 docking stations,
where weird ports on the underside of specific laptops could finally go away
in favour of a highly standardized one-cord docking solution.

18 months ago we deployed USB3 docks into a sizeable office space. We were
able to standardize on a model that works reliably, every time. The only down-
side is the dock can't provide power.

Now we're looking at a similar situation and USB-C is the 'obvious' choice.
But it's a far more complicated situation.

Some devices will take a charge, some won't, and you have to match up the
power input/output requirements quite carefully. It's a more complex landscape
than PoE, for no good reason.

Thunderbolt docks are the only ones we've found to provide reliable operation,
but they also suffer from weird docking/un-docking behaviour as well as
massive security flaws since you lost a lot of the 'standard' USB
safe/abstraction layer stuff by plugging in what is effectively a DMA device.

Yuck, frankly. This shouldn't have been so difficult - Just take USB3,
introduce a Power-over-USB capability, and bump the speed. But no.

------
Latteland
Not putting enough ports on devices is a crucial problem. Apple with their
stupid single port is just idiotic. The best port selection with usb-c is on
the 2015 chrome pixel laptop. 2 usb-c, 2 usb-a. Just having a single usb-c has
caused endless pain, all so apple could sell stupid dongles. The new google
pixelbook 2018 is a great form factor, except they only have 2 usb-c, they
dropped usb-a. The reason was probably to make it a little thinner. But like
on a macbook pro laptop, having two usb-a's mean you can plug a mouse and
keyboard into it. The new pixelbook needs an adapter for that.

edit: mixed up usb-a and -b. D'oh!

~~~
matthewmacleod
_Apple with their stupid single port is just idiotic_

This is on a single specific device.

 _The best port selection with usb-c is on the 2015 chrome pixel laptop. 2
usb-c, 2 usb-b_

You mean USB-A.

 _Just having a single usb-c has caused endless pain, all so apple could sell
stupid dongles._

Nobody I know using MacBooks has a particular problem with this. A dongle
would be required in most cases to connect to an external display in any case;
it's not like Apple are selling more dongles.

~~~
reaperducer
_Nobody I know using MacBooks has a particular problem with this. A dongle
would be required in most cases to connect to an external display in any case;
it 's not like Apple are selling more dongles._

Agreed.

My wife has a MacBook with a single USB-C port. Having only one port has
exactly zero impact on her. The only thing she uses it for is for charging,
and very occasionally plugging in a tiny hard drive to look at her iPhoto
library which is larger than the computer's built-in SSD.

Everything else in her lifestyle is wireless. And that's where Apple has been
going for a long time. She is Apple's target market for a single USB port
device.

If you're the kind of person whose lifestyle or workflow necessitates more
than one port, you buy a computer with more than one port. Doesn't seem like
rocket surgery. I don't understand why OC is so upset.

As for Apple selling more dongles, I don't think that's what's behind it.
Apple would probably rather have the shelf space for higher-margin in-house
products than use the space for SKUs from another company. I doubt Apple is
making bank on USB-C dongles.

~~~
icebraining
What does she do when she has low battery and needs to look at her iPhoto
library?

~~~
reaperducer
Hasn't happened, to my knowledge. The MacBook has way more battery than she
needs. (It's a home computer, not a work computer.)

And she's a human bring, not a squirrel on crack, or a nerd caught in a social
media feedback loop, so she never "needs" to look at her iPhoto library _right
now_. She can wait 30 minutes for a partial charge to see pictures of her
family or cats or whatever.

~~~
icebraining
Is the condescension really warranted for a simple question?

~~~
dijit
I didn't read it as being directed at you; just a statement of fact, not
everyone is glued to technology like the average demographic on HN, it's weird
to hear that someone can be unable to use their laptop immediately and they're
comfortable with that.

~~~
icebraining
It's a statement of fact that the average demographic of HN are not human
beings?

------
epistasis
I would like a USB-C hub that's like the USB-A hubs of yore: more than 2 USB-C
ports, ideally 4 or more downstream facing ports. I saw one once that had 2
downstream ports and one upstream port, as well as several USB-A downstream
ports, but I just want to transition fully to USB-C.

Why are there no products for that, I wonder?

~~~
hinkley
Have you tried using those '2 ports' on a USB-C 'hub'?

The ones I've tested, the second one is only useful for power in. You can't
actually chain devices off the hub to reduce the number of things you have to
plug in.

When USB-C was introduced it was finally a connector that could do power and
all your data. The culmination of the idea that started with the Mac monitors
with the single cable with 2 tails. No more ritual to go to or leave your
desk, wearing out the connectors on all your peripherals.

But we're not there yet. At all.

Even Anker has fucked this up. I can't plug a USB keyboard into their top of
the line hub if I plug the power supply into it. Probably because of the
overvoltage problem discussed here a few weeks ago.

Since I stopped plugging the power into it I've had no problems. But now I'm
back to plugging in 3 cables every time I come back from a meeting.

------
peterwwillis
The biggest fraud of USB-C is it just doesn't do what consumers expect. I
bought a USB-C device, expecting the device to then provide all the
functionality that USB-C was advertised as having. But the manufacturer didn't
implement any of those features, so it's just a non-standard cable that I need
a dozen adapters for. What a joke.

~~~
lopmotr
That's just expectations which will adapt quickly enough. I doubt you'll make
the same mistake again. It's not just type C either I bought a USB 3.0
thumbdrive once and it turned out to be the same speed as a normal one, so
even though it was 3.0 as advertised, there was absolutely no advantage in
that. Nobody complains that their bedside lamp doesn't deliver the full 2400 W
that the wall outlet advertises or that it doesn't allow bulbs more than 40 W
even though the same socket can take 100 W bulbs in other lamps.

~~~
peterwwillis
People do complain about lightbulbs. That's why lamps for sale list standard
safety ratings, bulb socket types, and bulb capacities. But nowhere on my $450
phone did it say "No USB-C extensions supported, this is just a standard
USB-3.0 device with a plug nothing supports".

If you bought a bulb that said "CFL form factor" and it was actually an
incandescent bulb that just looked like a CFL, you could arguably sue for
deceptive advertising.

------
imran3740
> Port shortages

Would it hurt anyone to put _two_ USB-C ports on a smartphone? Thank goodness
my phone still has a 3.5mm jack, but some people would like to charge their
phone and listen to (wired) audio without having to buy an adapter. And it's
not like this is an uncommon use case either, anecdotally some of my friends
with iPhones face this issue.

~~~
MBCook
Would you really have a second USB-C port over just keeping the headphone
jack?

~~~
imran3740
I mean, USB-C seems to be the direction we're going anyways, plus it offers a
lot more flexibility for audio eg. allows for active components like a higher-
end DAC or amp on the headphones.

Most people probably wouldn't really care for this, and the ones who do
probably have portable media players already, so I would prefer to keep the
headphone jack. The reality is, though, that USB-C appears to be the future.

~~~
paulmd
You don't need type-C for running an external DAC/amp. Most smartphones
support USB-OTG over micro-B and many DAC units use generic audio drivers.

Of course you'd still need two ports if you wanted to charge at the same time.

It would probably be more interesting to see smartphones that could use the
headphone output as a digital signal, like a coaxial output. We want the 3.5mm
output anyway, so why not just let it dump a digital signal to an external
amp?

~~~
pas
Can one port source data (digital audio) and sink power at the same time to a
splitter?

------
ohazi
The one nice thing I can say about USB Type-C is that the physical connector
is pretty great, especially when compared to Micro USB, which was _awful_.

Of course, even here I have to add a huge caveat, as I've seen devices that
charge at different rates depending on the orientation of the Type-C plug.

 _facepalm_

~~~
lucb1e
From my n=1 experience with USB-C, I prefer micro-USB because the connection
(female) is not sharp at the bottom of my phone. The one C connector I've
tried (Xiaomi Mi A1) was so sharp it was just not comfortable to hold. This
was one of the reasons I returned it and got another device with micro-USB
instead.

------
bluedino
I finally broke down and bought a generic USB-C charger (Insignia from Best
Buy) to keep in the shop, because enough USB-C laptops come through and nobody
ever brings a charger.

But just because a laptop has USB-C ports doesn't mean you can charge using
it, here's looking at you, Lenovo P51. This machine is a workstation and
requires 130W, USB-C can only supply 100W so _it won 't charge at all_ over
USB-C. Blah.

Also had no luck even trickle-charging smaller USB-C machines like the HP x360
using a phone charger.

~~~
kevin_b_er
Color me dumbfounded, but does "won't charge at all" mean it accepts 0A inward
or that it takes in only 100W while still draining itself at ~30W?

~~~
bluedino
Doesn't take a charge via USB-C, period.

------
Laforet
A few years back I thought USB-C was a better mechanical design than Apple's
lightning port. You see, the spring loaded parts were built into the male
conductors on the cable while lightning had them on the female connectors of
the actual device; judging from the number of broken USB and DC charging ports
I have witnessed it seemed prudent that moving parts should be placed in the
side that is more easily replaced.

Well, I got what I asked for. I bought my first smartphone with USB-C
connection by the end of 2106 and I'm on the 5th charging cable at the moment.
The cable that came with the phone failed 6 month in and the $20 replacements
(reputable brand with full fast charging capability while it worked) barely
lasted any longer. I am hesitant to buy anything more expensive as they'd have
a limited lifespan too.

Meanwhile all my lighning cables and devices bought in 2014 are going strong.
I did have to retire a couple of cables because the ends had started to fray
but even those never really ceased to charge.

My impression of USB-C so far gives me the vibes of early SATA ports rated to
last 50 insertions. A lot of work is needed to make it on par with USB-B
connectors in terms of physical reliability.

------
huebnerob
There's two fundamentally unrelated but easily muddled situations here.

A) USB-C PD, USB-C audio, or even just straight-up USB-C data devices, and/or
USB-C hosts not adhering to standards.

This is definitely a problem, but it's something that needs to be addressed by
device manufacturers, not by the spec itself.

B) Protocols other than USB over the USB-C connector (Thunderbolt 3,
Displayport, potentially analog audio output?) not being universally inter-
compatible.

I don't see how this one is a real issue. Imagine for a moment that you had a
magical morphing port that could be an audio jack, HDMI port, thunderbolt
port, or USB port, and it just became whichever one it needed to be when you
plugged something in. This is the situation we're in with USB-C multi-
protocol, the port on the host device changes identity based on what it's
connected to. That wouldn't mean that you could suddenly run your hard drive
off a 3.5mm headphone cable.

~~~
pdpi
> Imagine for a moment that you had a magical morphing port

That's mostly the case with Apple's devices where all ports support all
functionality, but there's products in the market where some but not all USB-C
ports are Thunderbolt- or USBPD-enabled. This becomes a royal pain in the
arse, where you have a bunch of ports that all look like they should support
the peripheral you're trying to plug in, but don't, for some reason.

~~~
MBCook
So put a USB-C hub (because that’s the connector, what else would you buy?)
into your Mac. And you plug your display into that. And it has some USB-C and
Thunderbolt stuff plugged in.

It used to all work, but now with the hub in-line your Thunderbolt drive
doesn’t work and your display doesn’t get a signal.

The hub must be broken, right? So you buy a new one. Same problem.

How is any normal person supposed to figure this stuff out?

You’re right. It’s a total mess.

~~~
pdpi
> So put a USB-C hub (because that’s the connector, what else would you buy?)
> into your Mac.

This _will_ eventually become a problem, definitely. Thankfully, it doesn't
seem to be much of a problem right now because USB-C hubs are as common as
hen's teeth (they're usually C to A, or C to a bazillion things)

~~~
MBCook
Right. If the hub supports Thunderbolt that fixes TB and USB-C will keep
working but you’d still lose passyhrough video unless it was designed for that
too. And don’t forget power delivery.

Good USB-C hubs that support everything will be quite expensive. They’re
basically limited Thunderbolt docks.

------
ogig
Just today I setup a Dell monitor (S2718D) to a new Macbook and was the first
time I thought USB-C was nice. Out of one cable you charge the Macbook, output
video to the monitor and get 2 very welcome USB ports from a hub in the
monitor base.

------
sparrish
I disagree. It's not a mess. It works well. So much better than USB 2.0.

I don't have to try to 'key' it correctly when plugging it in and the
connections are fast and 'just work'.

~~~
slouch
I agree. My device charges faster, and I haven't had any issues with cables
not working.

~~~
OnMyPhone
So far the only issues I've had with USB C is that I had to buy a Nintendo USB
C cable to charge my switch and a separate USB C cable wouldn't charge my
Pixel. It did work with an external hard drive so I know the cable wasn't
completely broken.

I know there's other cables from some brands that might have worked, but after
the 3rd one that wouldn't work for my switch I went for Nintendo.

I don't have a lot of USB C devices yet, so I'm hoping they get things ironed
out.

~~~
dhruvrrp
That is because the switch is not compliant with the usb-c specification.
There have been lots of reports of people bricking their switch using usb-c
cables which otherwise work fine with other usb-c devices.

Discussion on hn:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16706803](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16706803)

------
WhitneyLand
Designed by the same consortium that was fine with letting manufactures put
the “this side up” symbol for micro USB in black, on a black cable, in a size
~a couple millimeters square?

Btw, if you are still using some of these cables coloring one side with a
bright colored Sharpie will change your life.

------
dawnerd
I love it, mentioned it the other day in the thread about MBP gripes. One
cable to connect everything. Way better than the older days of plugging in
power, usb, displayport cables (and ethernet if thats your thing).

------
kbutler
I have 3 dongles and one power plugged into my macbook pro right now (ethernet
could be optional, external monitor, USB, power).

Maybe there will be a nice docking station sometime, but for now, it's dongle
city, and picking up the laptop a bit to connect/disconnect each one every
time I transition between mobile and desktop-replacement.

Maybe something like [https://nerdtechy.com/best-usb-c-docking-
stations](https://nerdtechy.com/best-usb-c-docking-stations), though they
currently are biased toward providing many USB-A ports.

~~~
reaperducer
_Maybe there will be a nice docking station sometime, but for now, it 's
dongle city, and picking up the laptop a bit to connect/disconnect each one
every time I transition between mobile and desktop-replacement._

That's not unique to USB-C. My MacBook has no USB-C ports, just the previous
gen. But right now has power, external hard drive, headphones, HDMI and a
mouse plugged into it. When I transition to mobile, I'll have to unplug all of
those, too.

As you note, a docking station would be the best solution, but it's just
another piece of gear I don't want on my desk.

~~~
lopmotr
What if there was a dongle that securely clipped/glued onto the bottom of the
computer so it feels like it's part of it? You'd never remove it and it would
simply become a bigger computer with all the ports you want. Just like if the
computer maker had put all those ports there in the first place.

I used to use a 3rd party battery that had double the capacity of the factory
battery but stuck out the bottom. It doubled as a small tilt-stand. No cables
or ever removing it like you would an external battery pack.

~~~
reaperducer
_> I used to use a 3rd party battery that had double the capacity of the
factory battery but stuck out the bottom. It doubled as a small tilt-stand. No
cables or ever removing it like you would an external battery pack._

I have something like that now for my MacBook Air. I think it's called a Chug
Plug, or something like that. Instead of using Apple's ever-changing computer-
side plug, it has the very-stable-so-far electrical socket end connection. So
you pop the little regional adapter off your laptop's wall wart and attach the
wall wart to the portable battery so it works with every laptop Apple's made
this century.

Heavy as hell, but works well.

------
jedberg
People got really mad when Apple decided _not_ to put USB-C on the latest
iPhones. Now that's looking to have been a pretty wise choice.

------
devxpy
This kind of makes sense if you look at how this should work..

Having a single port for everything is bad idea, because the electrical
interface can't possibly be the same for everything.

Making this happen is obviously a really hard task from an engineering
standpoint. Device makers have to employ various adapters internally, so that
everything works on the same interface.

No wonder manufacturers are suffering to keep up!

------
mikece
In order to solve the USB Type-C dumpster fire we need a new USB Type-D
standard which is unambiguously and apologetically _NOT_ backward
compatible... which is usually an Apple move. Except if Apple invents it they
aren't going to share it so there's no solution anytime soon.

------
djsumdog
USB-C /w DisplayPort seems to work really well for monitors. If you have a
monitor that can output a good amount of voltage, it is quite literally the
only connector you need.

At work the only cable connected to my MacBook Pro (running Linux) is a USB-C
thunderbolt cable to a monitor which connects all my standard USB-A devices
(keyboard, mouse, hub, flash, drives, etc.)

At home I can do the same thing with my HP Spectre or Dell XPS 15 and an LG
monitor (XPS complains about voltage, but it still charges).

Viewsonic even has USB-C monitors that are KVMs too. You plug in your keyboard
and mouse to the monitor and it will switch them on input select.

Ultimately I'd really like to see a pure USB-C KVM that support DisplayPort
1.4 (no KVM does this currently) so you could have laptop power and full
4k+10Bit all from one cable.

------
phito
The Nintendo Switch probably has the worst implementation of USB-C I've ever
seen.

~~~
mfgmfg
Did Nintendo even advertise it as being USB-C compliant? See
[https://plus.google.com/102612254593917101378/posts/2CUPZ5yV...](https://plus.google.com/102612254593917101378/posts/2CUPZ5yVTRT)

~~~
monocasa
They do, at least on their japanese site.

[https://www.nintendo.co.jp/hardware/switch/specs/#1](https://www.nintendo.co.jp/hardware/switch/specs/#1)

------
lopmotr
What happened to enforcing trademark rights on the USB logo? Just about every
obviously non-compliant 10m long USB extension cable or retractable power-only
cable has the USB logo on it. Sometimes it's a bastardized form but it's
basically still the logo. If they were more aggressive in eliminating these
products from the market, even one-man Amazon shops, then at you could look at
the logo to decide if it at least meets the spec.

------
ScottBurson
I have a new MacBook Pro, an external USB-C HDD for backup, and an Android
portable music player, also with USB-C. I got a cable to connect the HDD to
the MBP, and it works fine for that purpose, but when I use that cable to
connect the PMP to the MBP, it doesn't work: the MBP doesn't mount the PMP's
filesystem. But if I use a C-male-to-A-female adapter, then an A-to-C cable,
the PMP mounts just fine. Anyone know why?

~~~
ScottBurson
Never mind — it's working now. I don't know why it didn't work earlier.

------
sametmax
And voip, and sharing files, sending encrypted emails, managing your contacts,
taking notes on a computer, make a backup, simple photo edition, email
clients, todo management, rss readers, deal with your encryption key, work in
a terminal, packaging in Python...

I find it a good news: there is always something you can take as a mission.
There is plenty of things to do.

And that's just the geeks stuff, not even talking about the important specie
level issues.

------
digi_owl
The crazy part is that "reversible USB" was already a solved problem, by
clever engineering of the A plug.

Never mind that on its face, the C plug is a nice reversible plug. But then
someone noticed all those contact points on one side that went to waste half
the time, and thought they could cram even more signals down the wire, and
here we are...

~~~
organsnyder
Are you saying that some USB-C implementations are direction-specific? I've
never heard of that problem before.

~~~
digi_owl
Best i understand, they kinda are. But then the electronics at either end is
responsible for negotiating what side is "up".

------
zbentley
Another fun defect I've found while doing hardware support: some USB-C dongles
(for various ports) are directionally sensitive (only work when turned a
certain way. This isn't limited to cheap dongles, nor does it seem to be a
physical (shaky port or loose connection) problem. I'd love to know why that's
the case.

------
supertramp_
Believe me or not, I've bought a MacBook Pro with a 3rd-party usb-c Hub
adapter and I've noticed whenever I plug it, it interferes with my hotspot
connection (I don't receive any data from my hotspot anymore). Does anyone
know anything about this?

------
pkamb
I still don't understand why Apple did not release a USB-A + USB-C hub /
dongle to replace the Charging Brick on their new laptops. Would eliminate so
many of their USB-C issues just by having a high-quality port expander in the
market.

------
Animats
It's not just a 4-pin USB connector. It's a 24-pin connector with pins for
USB, DisplayPort, Thunderbolt, Ethernet, and JTAG. Some of which may work.

Do those 24 tiny pins hold up in use?

~~~
ohazi
In my experience, yes, they hold up far better than Micro USB. The Type-C
physical connector seems to be the one thing they actually managed to get
right.

------
TremendousJudge
I see that laptops don't come with HDMI output anymore. How many monitors have
USB-C inputs?

~~~
megaman22
Not a one of the dozen or so that I have, between work and home.

------
notadoc
Say what you want about USB-C, but it has been a bonanza for dongle sales.

------
ryzvonusef
[https://xkcd.com/927/](https://xkcd.com/927/)

cycle of life

~~~
jstimpfle
927 is also the number of times I have seen that comic linked here.

~~~
ryzvonusef
Sorry, it's just that...well this is the fact of life, isn't it?

Technologists ALL want standardization...but can't agree with themselves...and
us consumers have to suffer.

It was true then, when this comic was released (I still have a USB mini cable
somewhere), and it's true now.

Instead of trying for ONE universal standard... why not try for a "few" tiers
of standards? That way instead of a zillion variations of USB-C, we have at
most... five or six, perhaps.

------
mtgx
The main issue here is that USB IF wanted to "please everyone" and had a very
weak compliance process accompanied by a complex licensing scheme.

This is an idea created by their own hand. Hopefully there will be a Type-C
2.0 or something where _everyone_ has to implement either all the specs or
none of them. And all chargers and devices must be 100% compatible.

------
falcon620
I guess this solidifies the more and more common view that Apple's thought
leadership is something from the past.

A few years ago, the messaging was along the lines of "just wait, this will
just be a temporary pain - Apple is just being brave and taking the industry
leader role as usual".

------
dbg31415
> USB Type-C’s complexity is undoubtedly its undoing. Although the idea of one
> cable to support everything sounds very useful, the reality has quickly
> become a convoluted combination of proprietary versus on-spec products,
> differing cable qualities and capabilities, and opaque feature support. The
> result is a standard that looks simple to use but quickly leads to consumer
> frustration as there is no clear indication why certain cables and features
> don’t work across devices.

Spot on.

And, in the decades it'll take to sort out, Apple will be able to bolt on and
extra $250 per laptop in dongle fees. Genius.

* Steve Jobs Foretold the Downfall of Apple! - YouTube || [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZBma82g3Uag&t=0m40s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZBma82g3Uag&t=0m40s)

