The fact that every port used to be different is actually a feature, as it helps you identify which device supports what based on the ports it had. If you see an HDMI port on a laptop you can be sure it's going to output some kind of video signal over that. If you see Thunderbolt then you're sure the machine supports Thunderbolt.
USB-C just jams all these incompatible standards into a pin-count-constrained port (so they can't even all fit in, and trade-offs need to be made) without any way for the user to tell nor select which features should be enabled on which port.
My 12-inch MacBook for example has a USB-C port just like the MacBook Air and Pro, and yet if I plug in a Thunderbolt Display it won't work on the 12-inch one but will on the Air and Pro. As a user there is no easy way for me to tell the 12-inch Macbook's USB-C port is different than the Air/Pro unless you explicitly search for it in the tech specs (which is counter-intuitive as the whole point of USB-C is to be universal so in an ideal world you wouldn't/shouldn't even think about searching that).
Once this is sorted out we would have a wonderful world. Using a single Thunderbolt port I connect my notebook to a dock and immediately convert the small notebook into a desktop with three external monitors plus many other ports. I can also magically use the same USB-C hub I use in the notebook in my mobile phone to add a keyboard and mouse plus an HDMI monitor. I have never seen this in the past: my previous notebook needed a specific dock to work and had a two monitors limit (with three different display ports available) while the phone needed a specific accesory/cable to connect to an external monitor.
And we have not started talking about eGPUs yet ;-)
I tried buying into this, got burned. Dell XPS Dev Edition, top of the line Dell Thunderbolt Dock, should work great, I thought. Nothing but trouble, tons of complaints online, Dell refused a refund as it's "not defective" - it just doesn't work with Ubuntu well. The OS preinstalled on _their_ hardware. Most of the complaints about the Dell Thunderbolt docks are from Windows users, to top it all off.
My point being that the scenario you envision is now being sold by some manufacturers, but not necessarily delivered. These docks also have their own firmware, sometimes _multiple_ different firmwares, and at least those I've tried only let you update via Windows. There's UEFI updates that are supposed to help as well, again only updatable via Windows. So far, I can't say I'm super impressed with the reality of non-Mac Thunderbolt.
That world will not happen unless every single device including entry level phones and size-constrained devices somehow magically include all the circuitry required to handle all the different alternate modes.
Also, as far as I understand there just isn’t enough pins to support all the modes at once so trade offs have to be made...
I can plug in a X1 carbon thinkpad in my monitor (some ultrawide dell) with USB-C support just fine. I then get video, audio, USB (the monitor has a hub where I have mouse and keyboard connected) _and_ charging/powering my laptop over a single link.
Works today with Linux here! It's just magical, I tell you.
The world started to happen already, it may not become all that good and 100% universal soon or anytime, but good enough for a wide spread adoption.
I think the frustration is that it isn't totally known what you're getting until you try something.
Nintendo Switch uses the USB-C connector, but they're off spec which lead to people breaking their devices by connecting them to cabling/docks that weren't to the Switch's implementation. Think there was more nuance to it than just that, but grand scheme of things, the whole fiasco around that highlights concerns as no one wants to brick their devices.
This seems like a relatively easy fix that as you mention isn't 100%, but exists. On my MacBook Pro, the only reason I know my ports are Thunderbolt is because I know their specifications: the ports aren't marked in any particular way. The body/bodies involved with USB/Thunderbolt should make it a requirement that ports (and perhaps cables) indicate what it is capable of in a similar way to how USB 3.x TypeA/B cables have blue coloring within the port and the plug. At that stage, if I see a blue colored port or plug, I know I'm dealing with a 3.x USB one. If you refuse/can't meet the specification, you then shouldn't be able to use USB Type C for your product.
Instead, in their rush to get everything on USB Type C, they have seemingly tossed out any pretense of standards needing to be met to use the port and may stifle the port's adoption going forward.
I also recently bought a monitor with USB-C (Thunderbolt 3) which I can plug it's single cable into my DELL XPS and charge it, output 4K@60 to the display, and have my mouse and keyboard which are connected to the back of the monitor.
The downside is when I want to use the same kb/mouse with my desktop, I have to unplug them from the monitor and plug them into the desktop.
I use the same solution (not hub like you, but USB 4x switch, originally intended for printers, with an extra hub for have keyboard/mouse). Not all brands work for keyboard/mouse, but I have several that do.
Thats a great idea thanks. It's a shame the monitor didn't integrate this for when I switch display input, I was hoping to reduce the number of cables and boxes I use :(
Which monitor did you buy? I've been looking for one with USB-C support as I also have an XPS13. I have a 9360 and I know it uses a neutered TB3 PCIe lane (or something of that nature) so I'm concerned about being able to use a 4k 60 fps display with it. Have you had any issues? I use both Ubuntu and Windows on the machine, have you tried both with the monitor?
I don't run Windows so I can't answer that but Ubuntu 19.04 runs fine, although I've had minor issues with the laptop coming out of sleep and not outputting to the display occasionally.
EDIT: It's really nice in portrait for coding. I don't use the supplied stand but a desk mounted arm.
And if you plug a Samsung Galaxy S9/10/Note into that same USB-C, a full desktop will appear on your monitor as well using your existing ethernet, mouse, keyboard and audio outputs. Something not possible with full sized HDMI ports.
Interesting; I have the S9 and I've done this by accident while charging, but the monitor only shows what's normally on the phone screen, it doesn't stretch to a "full desktop". The mouse does work though.
Is there some setting I need to enable on my phone, or is my setup just different in some way?
It depends on a type of USB-C dongle I think - Samsung obviously recommends theirs, but it worked for me on my MacBook USB-C "dock" dongles with HDMI+ethernet+USB+power. IIRC you need the one that supplies power or you just get screen mirroring.
There's also a setting to switch between modes under Settings -> Connections -> More connection settings -> HDMI mode.
My ASUS Chromebook Flip C302CA (released January 5th, 2017) supports this, so it's really a hardware support issue. Take into account that most devices that would benefit from USB C/Thunderbolt 3 only really began supporting it in (very) late 2018/beginning of 2019. Most consumer devices just don't have the right connectivity, but that's changing.
Same here... I have a Dell USB-C dock and a Dell Precision and when I plugged my boss' 2017 MacBook Pro and all worked out of the box, including ethernet and charging, we were impressed.
Then I plugged my LG G6 and I could download at 80mb/s with the ethernet cable and I can use my mouse and keyboard, it even recognized my NAS.
Has anybody yet made a GPU and monitor that use a type-c alternate mode (whether it be display-port or something else) plus power delivery, such that your monitor does not need a separate power cable?
I would love to reach the point where a desktop computer only had a single power cable leading to the wall, with everything else getting powered via it.
It should theoretically be possible, since even fancy high-luminance monitors only run about 30W in use.
The real limiting factor here is that, assuming you could get a GPU with USB-C-out, you'd have to pass that power and any for accessories hooked up to the monitor through the GPU, and the nice ones currently are hitting the limits of available power already all by themselves (75W PCIE, 2x 150W power connectors - and a Vega 64, for example, can briefly peak at 360W).
So, to power your monitor over the same cable (and have at least another 15W for accessories plugged into it), you'd need a GPU that maxes out well under current ones on the market, which kind of defeats the point, you know?
On a side note, the way GPUs are increasingly hitting power constraints is why you see new designs switching to weird proprietary stuff like Apple's MPX modules, which allow a dedicated 500W per graphics card.
It would be hell on earth if you had to perform the same actions with multiple ports. If I had to choose between curing polio, and not having to use multiple ports, it'd be ports every time.
All the issues you are reporting are just growing pains and will be sorted out/disappear alongside adoption and as the standard matures. USB-C is what a computer connector should have been from day 1.
I wish that were true, but I won't hold my breath.
What is far more likely is that more standards and complexity will infiltrate the market before USB-C stabilizes into something that vendors can be consistent with and which consumers understand.
You have to be a detective to track down which cable is compatible with which port on your computer. Of course most e-commerce platforms don't show features of the cable, it's usb-c and be done with it...
I have no idea why the standard isn't mandating clear markings (eg something like the bands on resistors, or whatever that works for color blind folks too).
There was a comment about that here on HN a few months back and that kind of convinced me that it's to enable the very-very cheap gadgets to be at least compliant. Cheap chips, slow clocks, but at least they follow the protocol. At least that's the theory.
Apple wants white cables, some people want red, blue or yellow cables, so on. And the connectors are so small there is no place to put anything on them.
That's not true. It'd help a lot. Apple can use their cable and simply not say that it's USB3/TypeC/FancyX. No one would care if it would actually work.
But at least there were clear markings for those who care.
It would take up about 2 cm on each end of the cable, a set of bands, like a barcode. It doesn't even have to be that strikingly different in color.
Yes, to me that's the worst part of the USB-C family of standards: it expects the operating system to tell the user "you're plugging it wrong" (and it does have ways in the protocols to detect all these cases, like using a 2.0-only cable to a 3.x device, or the host not supporting the desired alternate mode, or a lower grade cable when both ends could use a higher grade cable), but that requires the operating system to care about it, and doesn't help at all before you buy and unpack the cable/device.
> it's usb-c and be done with it...
It's even worse: most cables I've seen in stores labeled "USB-C cable" are actually USB-A to USB-C cables. Other than these, so far I've only seen an unlabeled USB-C to USB-C cable, and a Sony brand USB 2.0 USB-C to USB-C cable, both costing around R$ 100 (way more expensive than I'd expect for a basic 2.0-only cable).
My experience watching a shop deal with transitioning to new Macs was that it was impossible to actually know a macbook+cable+device combo would work until you tried it. You could research all you wanted and there was still a chance it'd fail, or be glitchy and weird, unless you found someone with exactly the same combo to confirm that it worked fine.
Ditto dongles to connect to older devices. Will it work? No way to know, just try it and find out.
A nitpick but thunderbolt never had its own port. Versions 1 and 2 used mini display port plug and, version 3 used USB-C and well, USB-4 is just renamed Thunderbolt 3.
USB4 is more than just "renamed Thunderbolt 3". It adds USB 3.x tunneling while Thunderbolt 3 could only tunnel PCIe and DisplayPort (AFAIK, it faked USB 3.x tunneling by having a PCIe USB 3.x host on the device).
For work I had to connect a portable audio player to a USB audio amp recently. The amp is designed to plug into a regular computer, using standard USB-A at the computer end.
Since the audio player had USB-C we needed a basic USB-C to USB-A adapter.
Being audio only, it was low bandwidth, USB 2.0, no power transfer: we didn't need any fancy features from the cable. Just a plain USB-C to USB-A adapter.
I think we tried five different USB-C to USB-A adapter cables from different vendors before the audio player recognised the amp it was connected to.
It was so tempting to think there was a firmware bug, until we found out it was critically dependent on some mysterious, unknowable quality of the adapter.
Due to their high bandwidth I think we should have standardized around display connectors. It actually looks like USB-C "gives up" and just pushes out DP on unused copper? So it's like some super high bandwdith negotiation layer that could just... not be there.
Or, it looks like thunderbolt would have been a good option. But it seems overengineered -- the transport layer doesn't need to know anything about the data.
To add to this I’ve just had USB-C cause a major inconvenience; it appears the USB-C cable I brought with me doesn’t play nice with the official Apple charger and my laptop is now out of charge. It’s an AmazonBasics cable that worked fine with an Anker charger for ages so I didn’t think it would be a problem. I’m in a remote country with no Apple Stores in sight and so my only alternative is to play roulette by buying random unbranded cables from the local mall and hope they won’t have the same issue (given even AmazonBasics is apparently not good enough for the Apple charger) nor blow up my laptop by being completely out of spec (happened to that Google guy that was testing cables, can’t remember his name now).
These are pretty funny examples considering the amount of different HDMI ports and cable versions and the fact that Thunderbolt doesn't even have a port. It's either a mini display port or a USB C port.
This post shows exactly how useless relying on physical port was.
Not only that, but the USB-C plug itself is the worst-designed plug I have seen in a decade. It's flimsy sheet metal on the plug side with a nice big cantilever, and flimsy sheet metal soldered to a PCB on the other. Perfect recipe for broken ports and cables.
I break about a cable a week and break a device every now and then. Mostly doing very normal things like charging a phone in my pocket while hiking.
USB-C seems like a perfect example of a product designed by people who sit in an office chair all day and never go hiking, skiing, ice skating, rock climbing, or otherwise seek to understand what their users normally do with plugged-in devices in the field.
I miss the old DC barrel connectors -- they never broke, and they were usually designed such that housing of the electronics took the brunt of everything, not the PCB.
> I miss the old DC barrel connectors -- they never broke, and they were usually designed such that housing of the electronics took the brunt of everything, not the PCB.
I've patched up so many of these over the years, that doesn't really seem that accurate. Though it is relatively true for properly designed stuff (connector bottoms out on the case and not on the jack) and things using the rather rare panel-mount jacks, which are indeed very solid if only lacking in ingress protection.
Agreed. We had a bronze PowerBook and replaced the DC socket on it over and over before giving up. Worse yet, the socket was underneath a bunch of stuff inside the laptop, so the process was even slower than it might be.
And then there's all the guitar pedals I make with chassis-mounted jacks... they can take an amazing amount of abuse.
Same for audio jacks. PCB-mounted 3.5mm jacks need resoldering often enough, but panel-mounted lasts forever.
I disagree with the notion that just because they break that I'm "doing it wrong". Please listen to the customer. Rather, I'd say that they're just not rugged enough for my (consumer) standard of use, which needs to be more rugged than office use. I have legitimate needs to engage in sports while devices are plugged in and accessible. Other consumers get stuff bitten by children and pets, stepped on, tangled, and caught in things. That's consumer life. It should be accepted as a valid design problem to make a product rugged enough to tolerate that. Often a simple change in housings and shrouds would deal with this problem inexpensively -- in the case of USB, all it would take is for the shroud to be a part of the standard itself, and the housing it mates with to hold and relieve strain on the shroud.
What about IEC cables? They're super rugged and virtually impossible to break. Proportionally downsizing that connector to be small enough would likely maintain the same level of ruggedness while being small.
I'd appreciate if people don't downvote me just because you disagree with me. That discourages useful discussion on HN. I downvote trolls and people who abuse the system with spam, not people I disagree with.
>What about IEC cables? They're super rugged and virtually impossible to break. Proportionally downsizing that connector to be small enough would likely maintain the same level of ruggedness while being small.
Those are only designed to carry power though... not a complex list of protocols...
I've heard that USB-C is intentionally designed to break the cable rather than the port, in situations where one of those must break. That's absolutely been true in my experience.
It doesn't happen often, but I've dropped two phones while they're charging onto the cable. The micro-USB phone never charged the same again; depending on the cable, you needed to put pressure on it to tilt it in the right direction. My new USB-C phone cleanly bent the cable, and the connection seems as solid and as reliable as it ever was with the replacement.
I like the intent, but I would prefer ruggedizing them to the extent that neither of them breaks. Many automotive connectors, for example, are both inexpensive and extremely difficult to break either.
I want a phone that's small, light, is very powerful and has a battery that lasts a month.
Look what you are asking for is not economically possible. The connectors you are comparing with are much larger and don't even have close to the number of lanes as USB cables. It's a useless comparison.
There exist magnetic charging cables that can help with the breakage issue you're having. The connector and charging cable are connected by two magnets and some pins, instead of breaking the cable or the device itself, the cable will just disconnect.
What they say is they have a charger in their pocket and connected to their phone while hiking. So they're like yanking the cable, sometimes slightly, sometimes harder, thousands of times per day, as they walk, climb, etc. I'd say put the thing in a backpack, or use wireless, or whatever...
I'd say it should be designed for being able to put a phone in your pocket while connected to a charger and engaging in sports. That sounds like a perfectly normal consumer-friendly feature, and consumers will do it anyway. Putting it in a backpack means you cannot easily look at it.
The solution is fairly simple -- the /housing/ around the plug needs to be standardized and have a snug fit into the housing of the phone. That would relieve strain on the connector or contact.
I really don't understand why people are downvoting me here. I thought downvoting was to deal with trolls and abusers. When did people start downvoting people they disagree with? That discourages meaningful discussion.
Didn't downvote, but I can see how you might come across as being disingenuous or trollish by saying it should be designed for a particular use case (which implies it isn't), observing that it doesn't work, and suggesting it be redesigned. Most people have learned that it's a bad idea to keep your phone in your pocket while charging, decide not to do that, and subsequently don't have this problem.
Well, they keep breaking on me and (a) DC barrel connectors (b) headphone jacks (c) XT30U (d) BNC (e) DB9 and a bunch of other connectors almost never break on me.
I haven't straight up broken any connectors, but my Pixel 3's USB-C port is super picky about what cables will fit well enough to actually charge. I end up plugging it in, flipping the cable around, trying again, moving the phone so the cable hangs slightly different, etc. Port is clean (apparently they collect pocket lint), tried 5+ cables, only the original one has a decent hold once plugged in. All this means I basically _can't_ charge my phone on the go, in the car, etc.
I think in future devices are supposed to support as many popular functions as possible. Due to trend of thin devices we need smaller ports and fewer of them. Multiple possible use of same ports helps.
> As a user there is no easy way for me to tell the 12-inch Macbook's USB-C port is different than the Air/Pro unless you explicitly search for it in the tech specs
Seems like manufacturer failure.
> If you see an HDMI port on a laptop you can be sure it's going to output some kind of video signal over that.
But even HDMI/DP have versions. It's especially visible now, as we have >=4k HDR high-frequency displays.
> Due to trend of thin devices we need smaller ports and fewer of them.
People keep repeating this lie for some weird reason. Similar to the "3.5 had to go because phones are too thin for it" lie. Why? Why do you keep lying? What possible incentive do all these people have? Is it self-deception? "Oh yeah I'm totally fine with losing X, Y and Z because I get thinness and weight reduction in exchange!" You get neither.
iPhone 5 124x59x7.6 mm, 112 g
Six years later
iPhone 11 150x75x8.3 mm, 194 g
Now yes, its true, the iPhone 5 was part of a group of lightweight and thin phones that are now extinct, because clearly things are getting smaller, thinner and more lightweight to boot.
For notebooks the same observations can be made. The 2008 MBA is only about 100 g heavier than the current model, the thinnest part is the same(!) and thickest part about 4 mm thicker (1.9 vs 1.5 cm). A slight but minuscule improvement. You could have a 1.3 kg notebook at the end of the 90s, btw.
I blame marketing. People will run after every fad as though it is mission critical stuff and will re-tell marketing copy verbatim as though it is their own thoughts. I've seen this with a friend who watches Top Gear a lot, I heard him say something that did not make sense for him to say and tracked it back to a specific episode of Top Gear and confronted him with it. He was surprised himself!
This stuff really works and it gets under people's skins in ways that they are not aware of. If you want to keep an even keel I would like to propose that the only way you will be able to do so is to radically limit your ingestion of any kind of media.
The fact that every port used to be different is actually a feature, as it helps you identify which device supports what based on the ports it had. If you see an HDMI port on a laptop you can be sure it's going to output some kind of video signal over that. If you see Thunderbolt then you're sure the machine supports Thunderbolt.
USB-C just jams all these incompatible standards into a pin-count-constrained port (so they can't even all fit in, and trade-offs need to be made) without any way for the user to tell nor select which features should be enabled on which port.
My 12-inch MacBook for example has a USB-C port just like the MacBook Air and Pro, and yet if I plug in a Thunderbolt Display it won't work on the 12-inch one but will on the Air and Pro. As a user there is no easy way for me to tell the 12-inch Macbook's USB-C port is different than the Air/Pro unless you explicitly search for it in the tech specs (which is counter-intuitive as the whole point of USB-C is to be universal so in an ideal world you wouldn't/shouldn't even think about searching that).