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Death to the Trapezoid... Next USB Connector Will Be Reversible
TheRealHocusLocus writes "Extreme bandwidth is nice, intelligent power management is cool... but folks should be spilling into the streets in thankful praise that the next generation miniature USB connector will fit either way. All told — just how many intricate miracle devices have been scrapped in their prime — because a tiny USB port was mangled? For millennia untold chimpanzees and people have been poking termite mounds with round sticks. I for one am glad to see round stick technology make its way into consumer electronics. Death to the trapezoid, bring back the rectangle! So... since we're on roll here... how many other tiny annoyances that lead to big fails are out there?"
The new connector will be smaller too.
That's immoral
Big fails? How about small connectors? I greatly prefer regular-sized USB to micro-USB, they sit much better in the slot.
USB, developed from the Atari 800's SIO technology (1978/79!) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atari_SIO
I want a list of atrocities done in your name - Recoil
Bring back the circle. It will always fit!
I'd like to see the back of these. They pull out too easily.
Time for bed, said Zebedee - boing
Welcome to the USB Lightning... S.
Nobody's ever seen a reversible connector before :-)
Reminds me of the notebook's keyboard position, then the trackpad, then the clean designs etc etc...
Is the fact that the standard USB connection (rectangle) is not really 180 degrees symmetric (despite a shape that indicates it should be), usually takes 3+ attempts to get it in. Damn it, Jim, a spin-1/2 connector!
and just after The EU mandates micro-USB as a common phone charger
They are not actually redesigning the mini USB connector (if I'm passing reading comprehension 101...), this is a redesign of the full size USB Type-C connector to become a mini type connector. They don't say if the existing mini is changing so it seems like this may not effect cell phone style connectors?
The spec explicitly includes video output now. I know MHL and the like have become almost de facto standards but this will finalise it. Basically you've got all the advantages of the Lightning connector in a standardised design. I liked Lightning when it came out, but score one for universality.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
what i want to know is how easy will this connector be to try to fit SIDEWAYS and how breakable will the connector be??
Any person using FTFY or editing my postings agrees to a US$50.00 charge
Proof that USB cables are 4 dimensional.
Apologies if this appears twice. It looks like slashdot ate the first attempt.
Tic-Tac-Toe, Global Thermonuclear War, and relationships all have the same winning move.
USB 50/50 chance of getting it in the right way round.
wrong way round 100% of the time.
and usually 3-4 attempts to get it in.
Someone finally sat down and studied Yoka-yoke design principles.
Now that Europe is mandating the existing micro-USB for all phones are they going to modify the mandate to include this connector or is it too late for that and Europeans will not be able to enjoy this marvelous new connector?
AT LEAST 3 times the height - otherwise people will jam the thing in sideways.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I have to say, even on the technology front this hits my "first world problem" button. Its on the same device I used to control my TV remote control when its out of reach.
How about a round connector with concentric rings and a magnetic post at the center. This way it has 360 degree placement. You can also have the connector be surface mount with no recessed areas. To connect, you just put the connector close to the port and click, it is connected. If someone pulls or yanks on the cord, it just pops off instead of breaking or pulling the device with it.
Think of them as opportunities
Hope is the currency of fools
How about the CAPS LOCK key? I never use it and it has the size of the major keys, but somehow it lives on
Connectors that are (un)plugged often should either be symmetrical or clearly indexed. The original (big) USB plug was almost right (in the sense that the plug wouldn't go in the wrong way), except that it was difficult to tell which way the index should be facing. Firewire was a decent implementation of an indexed plug.
The current micro USB plugs are ridiculous, though. It can takes three tries to plug it in and every time you get it wrong you stress the socket a little. The difference in feel between a correct and incorrect fit is very mushy with some plugs/sockets.
While we're on the subject, a pure rectangle (a la the USB A plug) is even worse. The USB connector design over the years has been so bad that I wouldn't be too hopeful about what they come up with next.
If you want a vision of the future, imagine a youtube comments section scrolling - forever.
Hooray! No, wait, the opposite of that.
you must be a chimpanzee, have a tad bit of respect for the expensive shit you buy
Another way to sell us yet another cable to replace one we already have that works just fine.
It's not easy to pug the connector in upside down, so if someone forces it in in the wrong direction and breaks it, it's not the fault of the connector.
--- Keep the choice with the user..
But what will I do with the 600 or so micro USB cables I currently own?
"I do love the headphone jack. Simple, easy, and universal." And as doomed as POTS and broadcast NTSC. The headphone jack is currently the constraining design factor that prevents phones and tablets from getting any thinner. I guarantee you that Apple is working on a flat (reversible) replacement for the iPhone 6 or 7 or 8; the only question (other than when) is whether it'll be an open standard that will (over a few years) be embraced by the rest of the industry, proprietary to Apple, or something halfway in between that gets adopted by some manufacturers but not others and splits the media-playing industry into VHS and Beta again.
http://alternatives.rzero.com/
"n? Ridiculous! We need one standard that fits everyone's use case."
Now there are n+1 kinds of USB connectors.
US Patent Pending
A Method To Allow Device Insertions In Any Orientation
A device being any device that can be held in the hand between two fingers, too large to be grasped by two fingers yet small enough to be grasped by the whole hand, or too large to be grasped by a hand, an insertion being a process by which a device is brought close to another larger device with a receptacle and the first device placed into the receptacle to facilitate mutual operation, and orientation being the angular position of the first device relative to the second device along the common axis defined by the midpoint of the first device and the receptacle of the second device or being the skew position of the first device major or minor axis relative to the major or minor axis of the receptacle of the second device. This patent asserts a new method covering insertions of devices into receptacles of other devices in any orientation, and if it just works, whatever it is, you owe us a million dollars.
headphone jack. hmmm. inherently shorting!
as you insert or remove, the ground (larger band) shorts to the other contacts and for amps (and worse, psu's!) this is horrible.
I first learned this when I was building a diy bipolar (plus and minus) psu. I need a 3 conductor connector. hey, 1/4" phones jack has 3! so I used it.
took the box into work and it was immediately pointed out to me that for power use, it was really bad! yet I can remember audio alchemy (long gone company but they were well known once for audio gear) used 1/8" trs jacks for power! talk about ZAPPP!! when you insert or remove them. I was just a dumb kid at the time and I realized right away it was wrong; but a full company was doing this for years before they stopped.
for high end audio gear, they often remove protection circuits and if you remove the phones jack while music is playing, you can often blow the final output transistors or chips. this is well known on many diy designs (some people went with locking trs phone jacks to avoid this problem).
xlr (for audio) does not short as you insert or remove. but the banded trs or trrs does and for that reason, its one of the worst connector designs, ever.
--
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
ALL connectors are fucking terrible.
The exceptions are pc power plugs. And ethernet. And rj11 phone jacks.
Those are pretty much the only 3 you can plug in. In the dark. In a weird blind location and get it right 99% of the time on the first try.
The next one up that is 'idiot proof' is the giant 3 prong triangular 220v plugs on major appliances.
Every other plug in existance is a pain in the ass trying to put in blind. (i really hate polarized plugs)
I'm just glad the ps2 port is going away. Along with the AT keyboard port. Those are finally gone. Serial and parallel are pretty dead too.
Now we're just still stuck with the VGA port, usb, hdmi, dvi... All fucking terrible. And the 'mini' "micro" usb ones are the absolute worst.
We need more use of the barrel connectors! ROUND! Multilayer/level. You can't get round plugged in wrong.
Combine the design of an RCA cable with the layers of a 1/8th audio jack. Idiotproof and right there is 4 lines.
... as easily as the current microUSB connector?
I apologize for the lack of a signature.
A tweak that USB would need is to remove the requirement of having to "safely remove device". It would be much more streamlined and user-friendly if I could just chuck the device out any time.
This thread is useless without pics.
Making it reversible too would save millions of collective hours of fumbling. At the very least, standardize the plug just above the connector in such a way that the orientation is easily determinable by feel, rather than by use of a flashlight, magnifier and dust in one's contact lenses.
The WORST connectors are the trapezoidal HDMI connectors. Not only are they orientation specific, but they are often used on heavy cables that pull on the connector causing it to lose contact, and even bend the pins in the socket.
Add in the fact that the data rate is like a zillion bytes per second and there is an encryption handshake that must go just right at the start and you have a clusterfuck.
HDMI connectors seriously need an upgrade.
Why, you replace them with patented microgold polished MONSTER (r) brand cables made from special oxygen free copper, mined by highly trained trolls at MONSTER(r)'s secret mine. Each MONSTER(r) brand cable has been individually crafted and packaged in a secure plastic clamshell case, and is sold only by certified sales partners, who have each received training at MONSTER(r) University at their own expense.
So far I have managed to salvage my car charger with a full USB connector, with a USB > mini USB > micro USB adapter chain. Before long my string of adapters will be as long as the cable.
Yeah, of dynamite... I definitely think the same tools should be applied to computers.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
I noticed that my old throwaway Tracfones all had 2.5mm headphones jacks, but all higher-end tablets/phones I've seen use 3.5mm jacks... I know the 3.5mm is much more universal but the 2.5mm standard is already there, with plenty of adapters for 3.5mm devices, any time someone wants to make a slightly thinner device.
Tip-{ring,ring,...}-Sleeve. Easily handles the 3 or 4 connectors needs for just about any modern digital serial connector. Need power? why not modulate the signal on top of the power carrier? Easy to connect, proven reliable (can't count how many times I've broken a mini/micro USB or worse those umpteen pin pico/nano pin connectors that are only used for power or maybe a simple serial connection)
I'm in my right mind and I have the answer to everything!
Really? Wow. I've never had an issue. I just stick it in. In and out, in and out, in and out, in and out, in and out...
...
I do love the headphone jack. Simple, easy, and universal.
It was, at least the 1/8th" version, until they came up with a tip, ring, second ring, sleeve version to add video to the 2 audio channels and then some companies decided not to leave ground where it's been for the last half century or so.
I'm not really in favor of people being taken out and shot, but it's stuff like that which causes the thought to cross my mind.
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
The audio jack is even worse than the USB - audio cables are constantly putting sideways stress on the jack, eventually bending it out of shape. This design has to go back to at least 1900 with the only change being the size of the plug/jack. It would be simple to redesign this so that there is no risk of damaging the connection.
This was a solved problem with the original telco 1/4" plugs - the tip (and rings on more complicated versions) were narrower than the sleeve, and the insulating rings between segments had high shoulders. The design made it impossible to short the plug when jacking in/out (although you could still short a live plug tip to a live socket sleeve e.g. when plugging one piece of powered equipment into another separately-powered piece of equipment - later socket designs solved this problem too).
This basic common-sense feature was forgotton somewhere along the evolutionary line between the telco versions & the familiar consumer 1/4", 3.5mm, & 2.5mm versions. But the telco versions continued to have the sensible design (at least right up until at least the 80's).
But anyone who designs a device using a live consumer-style phone plug for power deserves all the warranty & incidental damages claims they'll inevitably get...
What part of "a well regulated militia" do you not understand?
Why not make the connector circular similar to a headphone jack? Then you won't be able to mess up insertion.
"To prevent this day from getting any worse, I'll just read ERROR as GOOD THING" 1GJU8xLuDKDxEs4KLf8fAGyptoDsqvEsBT
The article provides no pictures of the connector, and all it says is that it's in the draft phase right now, with the draft due to be finalized by the middle of next year.
As someone who sticks almost entirely to software, I'm also curious how they're able to do this. My understanding with Lightning was that it has to have some logic in place to determine which way it's oriented, but if the pins for USB are already defined and (presumably?) can't be changed for a new connector for an existing standard, I'm unclear how they'll be able to determine its orientation. Or do they not need to for some reason?
it's the regular sized ones that are awful. I can count on one hand the number of times I've managed to plug a full sized usb plug into a socket on first attempt. Usually I have to flip the thing over and try again and if that doesn't work, flip it again and try the first approach which for some reason works on the second attempt but almost never works on the first. The dope who designed that connector should be put up against the wall along with the dopes who decided to make it a standard.
It will be a great day when the USB connector is finally relegated to the dust bin of computer history/infamy.
Oh right, from Apple.
You mean the Apple who helped pioneer the first USB connector which everyone hates so much. Seriously people have been whining about the USB connector from about day 1 and reversible/rotationally symmetric connectors have existed for even longer.
To claim Apple "invented" the idea of a reversible USB connector is utterly just plain silly. Even if you claim it is invention to do something blindingly obvious, you'll be disappointed to hear that Nokia's DKU2 cable was (a) reversible (b) carried USB and (c) existed on the 2002 eara Nokia 6100, a full 5 years before even the first generation iPhone and a year before the iPod's reversible connector supported USB.
So no, it's not an invention and even if it was Nokia had it before Apple.
Seriously what is it with Apple Fanbois assuming they invented everything? You know it's possible to enjoy their products *without* having to make up random shit about how they did everything first.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
Apples blade style connector for iphone really nice. about as small as it can be, strong, reverisble.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
Round stick technology? Sounds like a headphone jack. Or Toslink, or tons of similar round plugs.
Everything old is new again.
(Anyone bringing back the IBM hermaphroditic connector?)
There is a simple fix for most wall-wart power strip issues: getting a power bar with transformer pads like APC's SurgeArrest 11 which has six sideways plugs spaced far enough apart to accommodate just about anything that might reasonably hang off a wall. I have two of those and do not remember running into an adapter that does not fit - though I did have to shuffle adapters to squeeze smaller ones next to oversized ones.
My patent based on yours:
All that on a computer .
#naabhaprzrag, #sverubfr-000, #agi-fcbafberq, negvpyr[pynff*=' negvpyr-ary-'] { qvfcynl: abar !vzcbegnag; }
My biggest gripe are the small AC to DC wall warts. Try as they might with different orientations of their bulbus shapes, they always take up to much room on my power strips.
Try some short (30cm or shorter) extension cords to get the wart off the strip.
Or alternatively, use a flexible power strip.
http://www.quirky.com/shop/44-Pivot-Power-Flexible-Power-Strip
upon the advice of my lawyer, i have no sig at this time
my power supply for my toshiba laptop fits perfectly into my western digital portable hard drive - which would be fine except there's about a 3 amp difference. I only blew up two of those before i had to put painters tape on the end of my laptop plug.
At the moment, my average attempt to plug in a USB cable takes three attempts: First, try it the way I think it should go, but doesn't work; Second, flip it over and try again; Third, double check that I had it flipped the correct direction the first time and press a little harder.
I hope they can avoid that issue with the new design.
And another dab coming (underhanded) at Apple in TFA:
"will also be tailored to work well with emerging product designs and will scale for future USB bus performance", said the group
Unlike Apple's Lightning port, current and future USB connection have decent bandwidth, and thus can drive a HDMI-out USB-chip to display HD (when they're not directly speaking 'MHL' instead of USB, directly to the display over a dump cable).
Unlike Lightning to 30-pin adaptors which are basically tiny protocol droids translating between the two.
And the Lightning port actually isn't a connector, just a direct internal bus. Whatever the iPhone speaks to the outside world is handled by a small chip in the cable or dongle.
In theory, the "pros" given by Apple are:
- evolutive. If a new form of connection arrivers (say for exemple USB3.2 over these new reversible connector), no need of any change in the iPhone itself, just get a new different dongle with an USB3.2 controller inside and a new-gen connector.
In practice, there are tons of "cons" :
- Non standard. (of course, that's apple)
- Mandatory chip (controlled and licensed by Apple) in every single thing that you connect. There can't be a dumb cable, you need a controller.
- Awful bandwith. Lightning's bandwith sucks, it can't be used to drive a display. Current HD-video out dongles have been found to be sorts of "AirPlay": video stream is (destructively) compressed using the accelerated hardware inside the iPhone, the compressed stream is output through the lightning port, the HD-Video out dongle contrain a full blown ARM SoC with integrated graphics which decompresses the video stream and outputs it on its own HDMI connector.
(Cue-in problem with generational compression, over expensive dongle hardware, etc.)
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
Is the fact that the standard USB connection (rectangle) is not really 180 degrees symmetric (despite a shape that indicates it should be), usually takes 3+ attempts to get it in. Damn it, Jim, a spin-1/2 connector!
Protip: The USB emblem goes "up". The logo is trademarked, and without it the cables are too frustrating to use. An interesting feat of human engineering indeed.
Now, let us travel through time far enough into the future that we come to appreciate the greatest connector design possible:
First, consider the connector with zero lines of symmetry, such as USB, or a polarized pronged plug. There is a 2D plane that the connector travels orthogonal to and which it must breech in order to complete a connection docking sequence. Consider this plane slicing through your connector and receptacle's contacts. Note that there is one receptacle surface for one connector pin passing through the docking plane.
To the Future! Copy and rotate your receptor 180 degrees in place along the docking plane. Eliminate any conflicting isolation surfaces, and move the pins such that they do not interact with each the other's connection surfaces. Now you have a reversible connector with one line of symmetry in the receptacle. The connector pins can occupy both sets of receptacle contact surfaces, but need only occupy one position to complete the electrical circuits.
Advance! Now we will perform the same step again, but with a 90 degree increment. Behold! A square connector!
60 degrees? Hexagonal connectors! Note that just imagining it we can nearly taste the hex filled future!
Onward, to 45 degrees, and to victory! Octagonal connections even mirror our futurist desire to slice the corners from our square UI windows, and tabs.
Oh integration, you foul beast. Clearly to see furthest into the future we must have infinite lines of symmetry in our docking plane -- BUT HOW?! With all pins occupying all positions across the USB connector, the left side interacts with the right side. Since connector pins need only exist in one position we need only make the connector pins have zero lines of symmetry -- move all the connector pins to one side. Simultaneously we have a perfectly round receptacle -- Ah, but all intersecting isolation surfaces are removed, this leaves us with only a flat ring of contacts and several pins.
So, now we will enter a new Dimension! We can stretch the docking plane in the 3rd dimension along the orthogonal connection axis! BEHOLD! We have discovered the most futuristic connector of all time! The Head Phone Jack!
Now, what's old can finally be new again. Story time is over, now get off my lawn.
The "large band" (the one nearest to the cable/grip) is the last in and first out so that part of the plug itself does not cause the shorts since it never contacts anything else but contacts inside the jack may short across rings during insertion and removal.
A live 1/8" plug is certainly very short-prone - imagine if AC outlets were switched around so we had exposed live copper lugs in unused outlets. A live 1/8" jack is much safer with no exposed live metal bits. As for audio accessories that used to use 1/8" plugs for power, those adapters usually were simple iron core transformers and these things can take a fair amount of abuse... particularly those without built-in rectifiers - but even rectifiers can take some abuse too, as long as they get some time to cool off between events.
My biggest gripe are the small AC to DC wall warts. Try as they might with different orientations of their bulbus shapes, they always take up to much room on my power strips
There are many power strips available to get around that problem.
Apple's lightning connector is basically a reversible USB connector... look for the new spec to be "intelligent" just like the apple device.
If it can be fitted upside down, let's make it square, so there will be now 4 ways of plugging it in, only 2 of which will work. After few iterations of that, maybe we will finally end up with round connector...
This story reminded me of this story.
Not sure if the new standard will help with extreme user-idiot issues like that one (no time to RTFA). Nothing to chisel out of the port, I take it? :)
"I love animals! Some are cute, others are tasty, what's not to like?" - Betsy Schroeder, Jeopardy contestant
About bloody time....
Even Apple got it right on its last cable update. Granted, it only took them like 10 years.
It the plug is reversible, I wonder how that will work electrically ? Maybe there will be a pin to indicate connector orientation.
It's a known point of wear. It should be designed to be replaced- not part of the motherboard of the phone.
WIll be less true- but still true of the new connectors because of sideways pressure on the cord.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
US Patent Pending
A Method To Allow Device Insertions In Any Orientation
A device being any device that can be held in the hand between two fingers, too large to be grasped by two fingers yet small enough to be grasped by the whole hand, or too large to be grasped by a hand, an insertion being a process by which a device is brought close to another larger device with a receptacle and the first device placed into the receptacle to facilitate mutual operation, and orientation being the angular position of the first device relative to the second device along the common axis defined by the midpoint of the first device and the receptacle of the second device or being the skew position of the first device major or minor axis relative to the major or minor axis of the receptacle of the second device. This patent asserts a new method covering insertions of devices into receptacles of other devices in any orientation, and if it just works, whatever it is, you owe us a million dollars.
A method. Not any method that accomplishes the described intention, but only one particular method.
Apple: With rounded corners.
Have gnu, will travel.
What bugs me is not simply having to buy more cables, which is bad enough. What really bugs me is having a mountain of different cords, connectors, cables, and adapters. I do mobile development, and I don't think two devices have the same cable. I have to put masking-tape tags on each cord to identify which device it goes with to be able to remember.
Let the British design the next standard. I have yet to see anyone pick up a BS 1363 and not figure out which way to insert it.
Have gnu, will travel.
So how long will it be before Apple sues?
... because what we always need is another standard.
XML is a known as a key material required to create SMD: Software of Mass Destruction
Apple's influence on the industry strikes again. Even if Apple isn't the first to take up some technology or improve a design, they are a trendsetter.
Once Apple ships magnetic power connectors that stop laptops from being pulled off desks or they ship a solid metal, reversible, extensible/future-proof connector, everyone else decides to jump on the bandwagon. Ultrabooks (read: MacBook Air clone) are another example.
Honestly, look at the USB 3 micro connector... it has to be the ugliest connector design ever imagined. They waited until after releasing that abomination on the world to suddenly decide reversibility and future-proofing were a good idea. I hope their wonderful redesign adopts the Lightning-style solid metal shape. The plug itself is much stronger, less subject to getting bent, smashed, etc, and naturally allows the socket to be sturdier. Smart moves when you are talking about a billion hairless apes smashing connectors into sockets as if they were rocks. How can you see the images of people putting coffee cups in their CD-ROM trays, busted-off mini-TOSlink connectors, etc and think any of the existing USB connectors are intelligently designed?
Apple thinks primarily about user's experience and is willing to toss legacy technology in the trash to streamline it. The USB-IF decided that USB 3 mircro had to be backwards-compatible with USB 2 micro so they just slapped a second port on the side and called it a day. If Apple makes a change, you're stuck with it so get over your floppy disk obsession and buy a USB memory stick. For everyone else, if Generic Vendor #9548 doesn't keep supporting your $9.99 USB 2 micro car charger, someone else will so any changes risk alienating users and failing to see any adoption, making manufacturers risk-averse.
Natural != (nontoxic || beneficial)
Are there major hurdles to using round connectors like for sounds? There could be bands (how a stereo setup works) for the same functionality of the pins.
Is 1563649 a prime number?
They should be outside of the bathroom so you can wash your hands without touching a door and peer pressure could enforce mandatory hand washing.
Apple already has patents on a 3.5mm jack that is half as thick by using pogo-pins internally. The thickness requirement is reduced to little more than the diameter of the headphone jack itself plus the top and bottom walls. As a result, it's not yet the bottleneck on device thickness, as the thinnest tablets and smartphones on the market are a few millimetres thicker than the minimum from the new connector style.
Atari had a great GPU designer (before the term was coined) but everything else about their engineering STANK, especially their I/O systems. Their floppy drive, on the putrid SIO bus, contained a computer more powerful than the 400/800 itself, merely to move data to the PC a little better than ONE KILOBYTE per second.
You could have achieved a higher transfer rate toggling an I/O line of a standard 6502 peripheral chip, under software control.
Like the lousy telecom equipment from the early 70s it ripped off (the worst engineers of the time merely copied existing horrific telecom or mini computer standards), the atrocious data rate was matched with the thickest connector imaginable, with dozens of defined data lines. A single twisted pair (remember the floppy had its own power supply) would have done the job tens or hundreds of times faster.
If the useless cretin that worked at Atari had ANYTHING to do with USB 1, no wonder everything about the standard was appalling. Even now, USB 3 is useless for any other than a single point-to-point connection for high data rate transfers, so long as latency and packet size don't matter. The fact that the plug was not reversible was a screw-up only someone who was world-class hopeless could achieve.
And before the usually morons step in, the success of USB as a deployed standard changes none of these observations. USB should have been a true packet based network standard, so multiple devices could have efficiently used the same SINGLE bandwidth topology- but instead you need multiple separate USB channels if you need to have multiple decent connections. Doing something TRIVIAL like having more than one USB connected camera operating at the same time is usually as good as impossible.
USB only works as a standard because connected USB devices have VERY low 'ambition', and USB is cheap to deploy.
I guarantee you that Apple is working on a flat (reversible) replacement
Here's the /. article from two years ago http://apple.slashdot.org/story/11/08/18/1736235/apple-patents-cutting-35mm-jack-in-half The link in the summary is broken.
Hey Apple: I'd rather have a phone with longer battery life than one that is so thin I have to wear glove to avoid being cut by the edges and uses an obnoxious 2.5mm headphone jack.
I read the internet for the articles.
I don't care, whatever they come up with, fine let it be. But the fact that there are so many different kinds of USB plugs now, totally negates what "USB" stands for. Whatever they come up with, just. fucking. keep. it. that. way - and on both sides!. The whole reason that I originally bought an iPhone was due to the salesman that told me that the charger was a USB charger.
Didn't the UK implement a law that requires some devices (phones?) to use a universal connector of some kind, in order to stop the madness of shitting on the public, requiring them to keep purchasing new proprietary cables every year, trashing all the old ones? What a good idea that was.
Politics; n. : A religion whereby man is god.
A place that I worked at back at the very beginning of the USB standard made muscle-stim devices. Basically high voltage pulse generators to stimulate muscles through skin electrodes.
We were a smallish company and connector development is expensive. At the time we were out looking for new connector ideas to replace the 2.5 mm jack. One engineer actually proposed adopting the USB connector for the high voltage outputs for the patient electrode leads. I'm pretty sure nobody ever asked anybody outside the company associated with the USB standard about it, and it obviously would have been prohibited.
Why not circular, fits all ways
Any word on how OTG will work with these connectors? At the moment, OTG relies on the plugs at the different ends of the cable being Type- Micro A and Type- Micro B, with the OTG device being capable of receiving either.
Precision wire twisting eliminates crosstalk and unequal induction.
Seriously. It's all in the twist.
Probably because USB is an evolution of serial communication between two endpoints (think RS232c and friends, or the ancient and beloved 20 mA loop) which isn't remotely the same paradigm as CSMACD networking.
Really, a smaller rectangular connector, as compared to the current micro-usb trapezoid connector is going to somehow make everyone dance in the streets because it is less likely to be mangled? It would seem that the problem with mangled connectors is not because of the trapezoid shape but the fact that the smaller they become, the thinner the material and therefore the more delicate they are.
This sounds more like a marketing decision to make people go out and purchase new adapters when they get new devices.
Let me go back to the last discussion we had here about Apple's lightning connectors and find all the people who said a reversible connector was too difficult to manufacture, expensive, and fragile for anything but overpriced shiny hipster fanboi Apple gear...
Also, olbig. XKCD
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
"the next generation miniature USB connector will fit either way
..
What an innovative idea, who would ever have thought that USB connectors you could plug-in the wrong way round was a bad idea
The process goes something like: gently push. Doesn't work. wiggle a bit. Still doesn't work. Flip over and try again. Neither of those work either. Then repeat a little bit harder until eventually it goes in or breaks.
Wait, we're still talking about USB ports here, right?
Not at all educated on they physics of connector design, but I wonder: Why not adopt something like a headphone jack design? A headphone + mic jack (or RCA video) has 3 bands. I feel like they could create one with 4-6 rings, perhaps be shorter and maybe fatter (to prevent them from being plugged into your actual headphone jack). Plugging in would be that much easier. Please educated me. Would it be too expensive or something? Some kind of electronics interference thing?
Quarter inch headphone jacks I'll agree with, but not the little ones. The plugs are sturdy enough, but I don't know how many headphone jacks I've replaced. If one goes bad in a phone or a tablet or a notebook, bye-bye having headphones for that device. Too damned hard to work on.
Gotta agree about wall warts. God but I hate those things. Wall warts for non-battery devices like printers, scanners, antenna amplifiers and so forth are especially stupid. If there are two devices that do the same thing in the store and one has a wall wart, I'll buy the other one even if it costs more. Wall warts for battery powered devices should be wire warts; put the wart in the wire, not the plug, there just aren't enough sockets to waste them.
Free Martian Whores!
...I remember when USB and Firewire first came out, one look at the plugs and it was obvious that one team was a little clueless.
Never let a lack of data get in the way of a good rant.
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| + # - |
| =============== |
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+ positive
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# ground
each is interconnected with its match
To claim Apple "invented" the idea of a reversible USB connector is utterly just plain silly. Even if you claim it is invention to do something blindingly obvious, you'll be disappointed to hear that Nokia's DKU2 cable was (a) reversible (b) carried USB and (c) existed on the 2002 eara Nokia 6100, a full 5 years before even the first generation iPhone and a year before the iPod's reversible connector supported USB.
The original iPod dock connector was not reversible. I'm pretty sure that the Lightning connector from last year is the first reversible connector that Apple has ever used.
If you want a vision of the future, imagine a youtube comments section scrolling - forever.
Maybe, but the connector that I had on my old Nokia (used until very recently) was a tiny bit like Apple's 30-pin connector, but infinitely less useful and much harder to use. The replacement Samsung has, I was disappointed to see, some weird proprietary port - looks like a tiny HDMI. I have no idea what it's for except for charging. Given that 'everyone' has Nokia chargers and no-one has weird Samsung chargers, I should have stuck with the Nokia even with its missing buttons.
Shit, I just took a look at the DKU2 cable you idolise - that looks like what my Nokia used. It was a POS, IMO. Chunky, yet fiddly all at the same time. No wonder no-one liked it.
Finally, a bit of sanity in the USB world. Take *that*, people on this forum who said it couldn't or shouldn't be done.
Now let's see if they can retain the only good quality of current connectors - the spring action that keeps them from falling out like other connectors (I'm looking at you, HDMI).
Perhaps for an encore, they can have the next version of the USB spec make HID events produce real IRQs, so we don't need to keep PS/2 hardware to generate PME events.
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
So... since we're on roll here... how many other tiny annoyances that lead to big fails are out there?"
Let's hear it for Apple, whose arrogance and boneheadedness means that millions of devices still don't have standard connectors to anything.
What about ddr memory? How many mother boards or sockets have been damaged through forced attempts to install one the wrong way? Why could not the smart people put a dimple or red dot on the dim and on the socket to indicate alignment. Why not have hermaphroditic everythings where everthings are possible.
They were successful with long florescent tubes, and more. Do they do this to meet a cost opportunity, or a time constraint.
Why why why, a thousand examples to use to ask why.
Leslie Satenstein Montreal Quebec Canada