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.

Comments

Stopped reading

[Mr D from 63]

Seems like a stream of thought list of statements rather than a cohesive message. Maybe that's the point?

Re:Stopped reading

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, I mean the article is "Man who wrote Tumblr gives his uneducated opinion on hardware"

Re:Stopped reading

[Anubis IV]

I put credence in what he says, but I don't understand why it's on the front page of Slashdot, given that it's basically an op-ed, which doesn't seem appropriate for here.

I follow his blog and listen to (some of) the podcasts he's on. He's opinionated, comes up against a lot of interesting situations because he pushes things in ways they weren't meant to be pushed, and, frankly, has enough disposable income after his successes (e.g. being the #2 employee at Tumblr) that he's able to do a lot of firsthand product research on products I am occasionally interested in purchasing. That said, like anyone else, he's frequently wrong about all sorts of things, and I'm sure he'd be the first to tell you that.

Re:Stopped reading

[ndnet]

I think part of the problem is that this is a complex issue that it's really hard to boil down to bullet points. Let's see:

• - USB-C connectors are a huge upgrade w/r/t size/sturdiness/reversibility (nice)
• - The USB-C connector was so good that it was rushed to market (bad)
• - USB-C connectors don't tell you anything else about the device or cables (bad)
• - The fact that USB-C makes no modern minimum speed guarantees - ie, there are USB-C devices with USB 2.0 signaling, like the Nexus 6P (bad)
• - USB-3.1+ 'Alternate Mode' is confusing because you can't tell from the port which, if any, are supported at all (bad)
• - USB Charging standards are mediocre. At least you theoretically can charge a phone with a charger you haven't researched. (bad)
• - Quick Charge was a great interim step by one large manufacturer but needs to die because it's not open at all (bad)
• - USB PD seems to be hard for manufacturers to get right, and as such there's risk - see the Nathan K. / Google stuff (bad)
• - Part of the problem is that the 3.1+ chipsets are still immature, and we were just starting to get USB 3.0 down right (bad)
• - Losing the audio jack to USB-C may be more bad-PR than a frequent actual inconvenience, but either way it's (bad)

So, except for that first bullet point, we are in the worst USB timeline. Still, even as bullet points, it's describing a mess.

dongle

[fluffernutter]

Just last night I was trying to copy a small config file to my android box. Samba wasn't working for me. Sftp transfer? I set up an ssh server. Nope wasn't working either. I see a flash drive, and think, why don't I just simply move the file with the flash drive. I grab the flash drive and run to my laptop and remember it's a macbook with usb-c and I have no idea where the usb dongle is. I felt defeated at that point.

Re:dongle

[mccalli]

Then get a dual USB A/USB C flash drive. It's the same as saying I looked for my Zip drive but couldn't remember where the Ultrawide SCSI cable was...it's just a transitory point in time whilst people switch over.

I personally guess this will be five to seven years before you start seeing desktops without USB A, but you've got to start somewhere.

Re:Fuck You Very Much, Apple.

[connect4]

hey, they got the "build incompatible shit and flog it to people as a veblen good" part of jobs' legacy spot on...^M ...wait that was his whole legacy.

I'll start using it

[JohnFen]

USB-C doesn't solve any problem I have, so I'm not going to go out of my way for it and am not particularly excited about it. But I won't resist it, either. I'll adopt is as devices I use switch to it.

Re:Summary

[AmiMoJo]

This. I've been using USB-C for a while on Windows 8.1 and it's fine. Everything works as you would expect.

The only issue I had was with MTP for file transfer, but that turned out to be a software issue and the patch last month fixed it. USB-C itself though has been great, even with cheap cables.

Re:This has little to do with Apple

[BronsCon]

No, but it would be nice to keep it around alongside the new and unproven interface until that new interface becomes proven. We're talking about the (still) ubiquitious USB-A port, here, not some dead-end technology we've been trying to get away ffor years. Well, maybe some people have been trying, but even they seem to agree that jumping to USB-C before it was proven was a mistake.

And now? USB-C has, indeed, been proven... to be quite a mess.

I have a USB-C phone that will charge from my backup battery, which will then go to sleep because it is no longer charging something; the phone will then wake it up and begin charging it. I have a laptop that charges via USB-C. Well, no, I don't. I have a laptop that charges via Thunderbolt through a USB-C port; it will not charge from any of the various power supplies I have, even if they support the voltage and current it expects; though it will happily dump the content of its own battery into my phone or a portable battery via the very same port.

That's to add to TFS, of course, as I've experienced most of what the author of that list of complaints has written, as well.

USB-A (and B) never had these problems, USB-C does, primarily because it's trying to be more than just USB. Does the port support Thunderbolt? With which cables? HDMI? DisplayPort? Both? Neither? And with which adapters is it compatible? There is no way to tell without pawing through the manual for the device the port is on, and we don't get manuals with our devices anymore.

The beauty of USB was that anything that could plug in to the port would just work, and we had that for nearly two decades. With USB-C, that's a thing of the past.

Yes, USB-C is a huge step forward... to a time I recall before USB-A took hold. If you're over 30 and remember that time as well, and still think USB-C is a net win, you'll be the first I've met.

Re:Here is the executive summary

[ctilsie242]

USB is a perfect example of "good enough". It is a lowest common denominator where a device can use the USB 1.1 protocol with cheap chips, and it will be acceptably working.

USB-C is a different animal. Because charge current can go either way (charger to a laptop, then from the laptop to a small port replicator), USB-C requires more sophisticated chips to handle the protocol. Chips that the Chinese lowest bidder OEMs/ODMs just don't want to pay for, so they cut corners.

Re:This has little to do with Apple

[BronsCon]

Do you also understand that the issues with USB-A came down to drivers, rather than hardware? And that, no, not every complaint against USB-C existed with USB-A -- namethose involving protocol mixing, which wasn't a thing with USB-A. You can't fix missing Thunderbolt suppora non-Intel system with a sofware update; likewise with HDMI/DisplayPort passthru on systems lacking that hardware.

The problem with USB-A was poor initial support for the specification. The problem with USB-C is that it's a collection of specifications with no way for the end user to know what a given compliant port or cable may or may not support; and the spec allows this condition. Things that didn't work with USB-A simply were not compliant; with USB-C, two fully compliant devices with the correct drivers on both ends are allowed to not work, and the spec says that's fine.

That's a problem.