USB inventor explains why the connector was not designed to be reversible (2019)

https://www.pcgamer.com/usb-inventor-explains-why-the-connector-was-not-designed-to-be-reversible/

by thunderbong • 3 years ago

266 530 3 years ago

hknmtt2• 3 years ago

They didn't have to double the wiring, just add wiring to the other side of the connector. That is barely 2 cm of wiring, at most. Also, manufacturers could have made the connectors in a way that would clearly show which side is the top and which is the bottom. So none of the issues had to happen but lazy manufacturers and gullible inventors caused all of this on their own.

cheaprentalyeti• 3 years ago

If they made the connector reversible, you'd have to try to plug it in five times to get the right orientation instead of just three...

hknmtt2• 3 years ago

OJFord2• 3 years ago

I, genuinely, have a USB-C cable which will only charge my phone in one orientation.

That's worse than Type-A, since I can't even look at the end to see which side has the plastic bar, I just have to try it and obviously it fits, but see if it charges. Which means it takes about 94 attempts because I only realise the other end's not plugged in, or it's turned off at the wall, on the 92nd.

netsharc2• 3 years ago

I bought a JBL headset which USB power cable is reversible, instead of a big plastic piece for half the plug, it has a thin strip of plastic, so the block of plastic of the port side can go in either side of the plug: https://images.nexusapp.co/assets/4a/75/a0/5733575.jpg

But I guess it might just have two wires (+5V and ground) and no data wires (I can't check it now because I'm at work).

nyanpasu642• 3 years ago

I had a USB cable with a reversible A plug, but after a few months/years it would stop charging (because the pins either wouldn't make contact with the A socket, or the wires snapped off the pins).

Someone• 3 years ago

Also, manufacturers could have made the connectors in a way that would clearly show which side is the top and which is the bottom

The spec almost requires manufacturers to do that. https://fabiensanglard.net/usbcheat/usb1.1.pdf, page 81:

“The usb icon is embossed, in a recessed area, on the topside of the USB plug”

“Receptacles should be oriented to allow the Icon on the plug to be visible during the mating process”

So, there must be a tactile and visual indicator (the recessed usb icon) and it should be visible.

They didn’t say “clearly visible”, though.

nubinetwork• 3 years ago

I've seen people try to connect ps/2 and vga cables upside down, and mash all the pins in the process. I'm fine with flipping a USB cable over a couple times until it goes in. /shrug

tinus_hn• 3 years ago

You can also insert the USB-a connector upside down, if you use enough force. It won’t really break anything but it will bend the plastic part so it becomes hard to insert the right way.

stavros5• 3 years ago

This is easily solved by also adding copper tracks on the backside of the connector!

RandallBrown• 3 years ago

I've seen reversible USB connectors that just have flexible pins that bend up or down depending on how the port is oriented.

tzs2• 3 years ago

Back in the days when 200 MB was a big drive for a personal computer, IBM was working on a 1 GB drive. I worked at a place that was doing firmware for a company that was going to use those 1 GB drives in their product, and that company had access to some of the earliest test units. We were writing the firmware for that product, so IBM allowed them to loan us a couple of the drives.

I once put one of the drives into my test system, and plugged in the power connector. It used a standard Molex connector [1].

The way the drive was mounted I couldn't actually see the plug or socket. It's a keyed connector so that should not be a problem. Yet somehow I managed to plug it in upside down which fried the drive.

Afterwards I did some tests and found that the plastic on the connector on the drive was very soft. If you tried to plug in the wrong way the parts that were supposed to get in the way due to the keying would just deform out of the weight.

It took more force to insert it the wrong way, but not more than was often needed when you happened across a plug and socket combination that were a tight fit so that didn't tip you off.

I reported that to the person who had loaned us the drive and he told me he'd fried two of them that way. He said that when he told IBM about that his contact there said that they were losing something like 10% of the drives during testing right after manufacturing due to their technicians getting it backward, and the parts list had already been revised to switch to a connector hard enough for the keying to actually work.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molex_connector

worksonmine• 3 years ago

I just touch the connector to find the void. It always goes down and this trick never failed me. I have no problem plugging in USB on the first try even in the dark.

extraduder_ire3• 3 years ago

My personal favourite is people jamming VGA cables into serial ports on the back of PCs. Like, they both have pins sticking out of them.

donatj2• 3 years ago

Hear me out. The original USB only had 4 pins. I always thought a round ringed TRS style plug like headphones use would have been great. No way to orient it incorrectly.

oniony• 3 years ago

I think the problem these connectors have is that each ring has to slide over the other contacts to get to its correct location.

USB Type-A has longer contacts for pins 1 and 4, the power pins, so they contact first and remain contacted before the data pins make contact. You can see that in this picture https://www.electroschematics.com/usb-how-things-work/.

tommiegannert4• 3 years ago

Many of the TRS connectors have a built-in switch to (originally) disconnect the internal speaker.

It would probably have been easy to extend that concept to isolate all contacts until the tip hits the bottom.

metaphor• 3 years ago

I always thought a round ringed TRS style plug like headphones use would have been great. No way to orient it incorrectly.

Now consider the forward-looking bandwidth implications with that class of physical interconnect.

adolph• 3 years ago

The iPod shuffle did this to decrease the connector size and count.

perilunar5• 3 years ago

YES. TRRS would have been great. Or mini-TOSLINK

donatj2• 3 years ago

It didn't really need to go in either way. It just needed to not be rotationally symmetrical while only going in one way.

Firewire only went in one way but it was never an issue because it's shape conveyed a clear orientation.

jawns• 3 years ago

I agree that there was more that could have been done to signal correct orientation.

But an additional wrinkle is that the orientation of the port itself was not static. On laptops and desktops, it was horizontal. On certain other devices, it was vertical. Often these ports were in hard-to-reach or hard-to-see places, and having to reconcile the orientation in each case probably added to the frustration.

stavros5• 3 years ago

Not really, HDMI ports are in weird orientation and mounted in hard-to-reach places as well, but the shape makes it very obvious (even by feel) which way it should (or can't) go. This is much harder with the rectangular USB plug.

josefx• 3 years ago

or hard-to-see places

Which brings up the idea of not making it size compatible with the network port.

lloeki4• 3 years ago

USB-A too: fat part bottom, connectors up, logo up.

This also doesn't explain why three-state and five-state also apply to resp. mini+micro USB-A and USB-B.

Oh wait, people don't look at the port front and center and fail to memorize the port direction, irrespective of shape, that's why.

slikrick3• 3 years ago

That doesn't help vertical orientation of USB-As

gsich5• 3 years ago

Logo up is no help when you try to do it in the dark.

MayeulC• 3 years ago

Female (host) USB-A orientation is not always consistent, thought, which adds to the confusion. Thought the orientation you de scribe is the most common zone, I can recall at l'East two devices (laptop and desktop) where it was reversed.

jjoonathan• 3 years ago

Hey, they could have made it not rotationally symmetrical but mandated an orientation opposite of the one that makes the socket look like a cute little surprised face, thus ensuring a long, drawn out, losing battle between the correct orientation and the looks-like-a-little-face orientation.

jonah• 3 years ago

But is "that way" actually "Correct" or not...?

Technology Connections dig in to this in "Power outlets are topsy turvy - but does it matter?"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vNj75gJVxcE

gsich5• 3 years ago

Firewire ports can be inserted the wrong way, if the material cheapens out you are in bad luck. Wrong polarity will most likely kill the other device.

yborg• 3 years ago

I can just imagine what the polarized wall sockets in your house must look like.

lxgr14• 3 years ago

Firewire ports can be inserted the wrong way

Hopefully only with a hammer!?

RajT88• 3 years ago

It's amazing that it can take you 3 tries to plug in a USB cable which only has 2 correct ways it can be oriented.

agumonkey3• 3 years ago

The funniest part is that it still takes 3 tries even when you know what you just said.

bravetraveler2• 3 years ago

I've found a trick but have trouble explaining it to people - especially if they haven't build a computer before.

The plastic bit inside of the plug usually goes on the side facing whatever board it's interfacing with.

For example, looking straight on from the back of an ATX case, it's usually on the left side - where the motherboard mounts

Front panel connectors are anarchy... but at least they're usually visible

guntherhermann• 3 years ago

Even after 25 years of using USB devices this still happens to me, today, in fact!

evanb• 3 years ago

USB is the only macroscopic fermion I know. Try to plug it in and fail, rotate it 180˚ and fail, rotate 180˚ and it plugs in. Must be the minus sign.

raisedbyninjas• 3 years ago

If the standard included specs on the enclosure, then maybe we wouldn't need three tries. Especially when plugging these in blind, like the back of a monitor, I wish the case had a funnel shaped shroud so you know the male end was aligned correctly even though it might be reversed.

airstrike• 3 years ago

The fact that the inventor doesn't see this obvious fact honestly boggles the mind.

lxgr14• 3 years ago

Low-level (electrical/logical) protocol design and connector design seem like pretty different skills!

hellotheretoday• 3 years ago

Counterpoint: I knew a few people awhile back that wrecked FireWire audio gear because they forced the connecter in backward and powered it on

Even now i do a small repair shop as a side business. Broken hdmi connectors because someone forced the connector in upside down isn’t exactly common but it’s not exactly rare either. Some people think stuff really needs to be forced together, apparently

notyourwork2• 3 years ago

isn’t exactly common but it’s not exactly rare either.

Using electronics needs a drivers license like equivalent. Some people shouldn't have access to them if getting an HDMI connector wrong is an issue.

bsimpson2• 3 years ago

When I was a teenager, I had a Windows machine I used for 3D animation and an iPod. I needed to charge the iPod and my mom was calling "dinner!" so I plugged it in quickly and ran off to eat.

When I came back, I realized the Windows machine had a cheap Firewire socket that didn't enforce the orientation. I had plugged in my iPod upsidedown.

I don't remember what it fried. I don't remember the iPod dying, so I'm guessing that socket never worked again.

laydn• 3 years ago

It just had to be non-symmetrical on the Z-axis, that's all. Like an HDMI connector.

simonjgreen2• 3 years ago

Or displayport. Personally I find hdmi almost as annoying as usb, though I can’t explain why that happens!

jve• 3 years ago

Because when you have to plug hdmi on a wall mounted tv or monitor that is close to wall and hard to rotate - you end up not only guessing orientation but having a hard time to find that port... :)

opan3• 3 years ago

One problem with HDMI is that it has no clips or screws or similar holding it in, unlike DP, DVI, VGA, BNC... I remember I used to knock the HDMI out of one of my monitors with my foot all the time. It plugged in going straight up and barely could resist a bit more force than gravity, and the cable dangled behind the desk since the tower was on the floor.

perilunar5• 3 years ago

or perfectly symmetrical, i.e. round.

blamazon• 3 years ago

This page was difficult to read on my mobile due to ads. Here is a link to the source of the interview mentioned in the headline:

https://text.npr.org/2019/06/21/734451600/ever-plugged-a-usb...

coldpie• 3 years ago

Install an ad blocker, friend! Firefox + uBlock Origin on Android, or 1Blocker on iOS.

OGWhales• 3 years ago

You can also use Orion on iOS, it has built in ad-blocking or you can install Ublock Origin extension.

bsimpson2• 3 years ago

@dang can we update the src?

lesuorac3• 3 years ago

I know everybody is still on the high from USB-C but I'm still going to go on the record it will be one of the biggest disasters in cable history.

1) There's going to be video-only cables; low-voltage only cables; etc and this time everything is usb-c so you can literally only tell which ables work by testing all of the dozen cables instead of the 1-2 USB-As you have.

2) The connector is symmetrical but the pins aren't. You can see a wiring scheme of how symmetry is handled [1]; literally manufactures are going to cheap out and not do that and you have 1-way USB-C cables without any kind of orientation markers.

An obviously key'd connector like firewire / ethernet would've solved all of USB-A's flip it thrice problems. And this could've been allowed in a backwards compatible where old USB-A cables were basically a skeleton key and the new USB-A cables had a ward that blocked them from fitting incorrectly.

[1] https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/125011/how-d...

quietbritishjim2• 3 years ago

I can certainly see (1) happening, especially with cables that come with the device they are expected to plug into. It already widely happens with fallback to slower bit rate or lower power charging.

But (2) seems very unlikely. Most consumers just won't even consider that it has an orientation, and after it fails a few times chuck it in the bin or send it back. If it comes with a device (i.e. printer or monitor comes with a non-reversible cable) they're likely to send the whole device back. That would be a ridiculous false economy for the manufacturer.

gpderetta2• 3 years ago

I had a USB-C Xiaomi phone that at some point only allowed being plugged in in one orientation. I guess one side failed, but then again, that wasn't the only failing of that phone, nor even close to the most annoying.

usrusr4• 3 years ago

(1) as in Video only, as in they won't work to top up the battery in random Bluetooth gadgets and the like? Amongst compliant cables, you might occasionally find some that are rated 40 Gbps but do not identify as high voltage capable. But I suspect that once manufacturers stomach the wire cost of those fat 40+ cables (display!), skimping out on PD capability just won't make enough of a difference to abandon efficiencies of scale. PD cables that are no/low bandwidth? Sure, those will be with us forever. But "display only" will be a rarity.

yreg2• 3 years ago

HDMI flashbacks…

The solution is - I guess - to buy plenty of 'good' multipurpose cables and throw anything that doesn't work as expected away.

lloeki4• 3 years ago

There's going to be video-only cables

From my understanding I think that is not technically possible because to pass video they need the data lines but maybe I'm mistaken?

IIUC again even if it did work I think these would be non-compliant. People hell-bent on doing non-compliant things would do it irrespective of any design.

low-voltage only cables

That's a given due to physical constraints (length, diameter: would you accept that all cables are 0.8m / thick and unbendable). It was so with USB-A too, as well as non-standard power delivery, at the risk of setting things on fire or destroying devices. USB-PD makes it so that you basically can't fry anything or melt a cable, it falls back to the best possible through negotiation. But then again, people hell-bent on doing non-compliant things would do it irrespective of any design.

literally manufactures are going to cheap out and not do that and you have 1-way USB-C cables without any kind of orientation markers.

Non-compliant for sure. Ah, yes, people hell-bent on doing non-compliant things would do it irrespective of any design.

At least with USB-C+USB-4+USB-PD we get a fighting chance.

An obviously key'd connector like firewire / ethernet would've solved all of USB-A's flip it thrice problems

Rumour has it that USB-B which is keyed, has five positions due to squareness. FireWire and Ethernet have the same state superpositions as USB-A. Hell I've seen people shove an Ethernet cable the wrong way in and have it fit (breaking the infamous clip in the process). USB-C? I lay it basically flat and clip it in, barely looking at the connector and not even taking a glance at the port. Worst case it needs a few degrees rotation.

dharmab• 3 years ago

From my understanding I think that is not technically possible because to pass video they need the data lines but maybe I'm mistaken?

Counterexample: The Meta Quest link cables use a USB-C style connector but internally are very different from a regular cable.

addicted• 3 years ago

Maybe it’s news to iPhone people (and I say this as someone whose only used iPhones since he got a smartphone over a decade ago other than for 6 months where I used a Windows phone and 3 months of an Android phone), USB-C wasn’t invented with the iPhone 15.

It’s been around a long time and most people have managed just fine, and absolutely loved the common cable. And everyone hated the iPhone user because you had to pull out a new cable to charge it.

scarface_745• 3 years ago

Grab a random USB C cable. Now answer a few questions.

1. What speed does the cable support?

2. How much data does the cable support?

3. Can it support video over USB-C?

tuyiown2• 3 years ago

Not ideal for sure but I don't see the cable disaster you claim, specifically what clear improvement you would have with multiplication of connectors.

Connectors, cheap and reliable are hard to design, and there's that much solution that works, and economics of scale works wonderfully by this kind of mass production (the good enough converges to reliable cheap). Also, the backward compatibility is real, and not to be dismissed too lightly. Say, for an USB-A connector, would really go one way where a USB 3 cable and device should NOT work with your older computer ?

There will be waste, there will be disgruntlement, but at real diagnostic will be possible (instead of the vague indications like «use provided cable» we have for HDMI and DisplayPort). For power, you can already find cable with a mini LED display on the plug to show max wattage once plugged.

Limited cables will quickly have label to show their specific capability (4K/8K, for PD only, 100W 60W), for cables you buy. General case for cables provided by manufacturer is, you keep you cable with the device, no real confusion here.

I know many have the cable drawer full of just-in-case that never comes that would dream to have it blissfully replaced by unlabeled USB-C cables, but this is just not how general people handle the problem. They keep the cable with the device, and learn what they need before or after buying a replacement, or better, asking someone in a shop, those still exists for all I know.

slikrick3• 3 years ago

USBC has been out for over a decade, have you ever run into 2)

alexwasserman• 3 years ago

My keyboard came with a usb A to usb C cable which is proprietary in some way. A regular cable doesn’t work for it.

Izkata7• 3 years ago

Up until this year I've had exactly 3 USB-C cables: Nintendo Switch, which is always plugged into its dock; laptop charger, also always plugged in at my desk; and phone charger. No real room for the mistakes they're describing.

tzs2• 3 years ago

I wish there was a requirement that USB C cables must have sort of ID chip that can be easily read that tells what the cable supports, so that we could have simple testers that you can plug a cable into and be told what speed and power it supports.

tomjakubowski• 3 years ago

If you have two USB-C ports on one computer which both support "everything", could you write a cable tester in software?

Ajedi326• 3 years ago

That exists. It's called an e-marker and you can buy testers for about $60 that will read it for you. If a cable doesn't have one of those markers then odds are it can't handle over 5 amps or USB 2.0 speeds.

It is kind of annoying that that functionality isn't built into phones and PCs though. There was some talk about building support into the Linux kernel[1] but it doesn't seem like that went anywhere.

[1] https://people.kernel.org/bleung/now-how-many-usb-c-to-usb-c...

ianburrell2• 3 years ago

Except for power, that is all determinable from the cable itself. USB-C cable supports power and USB2 data. Resistor determines the power, either legacy USB, 1.5A or 3A. Every USB-C cables support that. If there are USB3 pins connected, then it supports USB3 data and alternate mode. I think USB3 has negotiation protocol to figure out the data rate. There is also negotiation about power delivery on USB-C specific pins.

Max-q6• 3 years ago

USB C with USB 3 had an id chip. If the cable does not have a chip, it is good old USB 2.

Ajedi326• 3 years ago

I had to do a double take after reading this comment to make sure I wasn't reading an old thread from 2014 or something.

USB-C has been out for years now and neither of these predictions have come to pass. Your comment aged poorly before you even finished writing it.

USB-C isn't without its problems, but neither of those are one of them.

alanbernstein3• 3 years ago

I own a usb-c male to usb-c female extension cable that I connect to a yubikey. The yubikey only works in one orientation. I don't have any other bits to test hypotheses with, but I believe the cable was made with the symmetry problem described above.

pclmulqdq• 3 years ago

Wait, there already are PD-specific cables, video-specific cables, and the like. If your cable is short enough, it's not an issue, but if you want one longer than 1 meter, you will likely have problems with 4k video on a cable that isn't specifically designed for high data rates.

aenvoker• 3 years ago

I have a USB-C cable that only charges when oriented one way.

ianferrel• 3 years ago

I have USB-C cables that look the same, but some of them carry video and some don't.

I have USB-C charging devices that will charge off of some cables, but not off the one that will charge my laptop. I now have a box of weird crappy cheap USB-C cables with taped-on notes that say which toys they'll charge.

I never had this problem with previous USBs. If the cable fit in the port, it would charge and transfer data. Sometimes you needed a different cable or port or something to go faster, but they all basically worked.

julienb_sea• 3 years ago

New iphone ships with a beautiful braided USB-C cable that's charge only. I'm going to cannibalize the usb-c cable from my external nvme drive if I ever want to plug the new phone in. Some usb-c cables are 100W compliant, many are not. None of them are clearly labeled.

sokoloff5• 3 years ago

I have many USB-C cables that don't behave like other USB-C cables. Just this past week, I had to buy another cable for my son's desk setup because of the many USB-C cables I had, I was out of the ones that would carry 4K video and USB-C 80+W PD to his laptop at the same time. (I had a couple that worked, but they were in use for my wife and I, and the couple handfuls of others I had were capable of zero or one of those two functions.)

Cannabat• 3 years ago

You’ve been fortunate (or far more clued in to usb standards than just about everyone) if you don’t already have multiple usb c cables with different capabilities.

It’s possible for noncompliant usb c cable to fry electronics.

I don’t know of any other connector standard where the connector doesn’t clearly indicate or imply the cable’s capabilities. I’m sure they exist, but generally for consumer electronics if a cable fits, it works. Except for usb c.

IshKebab2• 3 years ago

I used a Bluetooth analyser once that had a USB-C connector that only plugged in one way. It had a dedicated "wrong way around" LED to tell you to rotate it.

Kind of hilarious. It's the only example I've ever seen though so not a real problem IMO.

The cables issue is real, but I don't really see the alternative. Would everyone really be happier if all USB-C cables had to be expensive thick 40 Gb/s 100W cables? No.

joshstrange3• 3 years ago

USB-C has been out for years now and neither of these predictions have come to pass. Your comment aged poorly before you even finished writing it.

Number 1 absolutely has. I've been somewhat in the market for a tester that I can plug both ends of a USB-C cable into and see what voltage, speed, and other specs it supports since most of my cables have zero markings on them.

macintux2• 3 years ago

Data vs power-only is very much a problem. See this Daring Fireball note about an iPhone review: Becca Farsace plugged her iPhone into an external drive for shooting video, only to discover later that it was only useful for charging, and the recording was very low quality.

(This is something Apple should fix at the software level by alerting the user, but it highlights the problem that cables are not readily distinguishable.)

https://daringfireball.net/linked/2023/10/05/farsace-iphone-...

eloisant• 3 years ago

Also I have to say that the situation of USB-C is much better now than in the past.

At the beginning of USB-C you had devices that were not implementing the standard correctly, and using the wrong cable could fry a device.

Now the devices are better protected, you can charge any device with any charger. Of course the charger needs to be powerful enough but if it's too powerful it's still safe to use.

MiddleEndian• 3 years ago

USB-C has been fucking fantastic for me. I plug one USB-C cable into my personal laptop or my work laptop, and I get a USB hub for my external keyboard and mouse, my external monitor, and power, all with a single plug. Makes it so easy to swap everything in and out.

mbar842• 3 years ago

I have one USB-C cable that I know can be used to charge my laptop. I can't grab any old USB-C cable and use it to charge from my the exact same power brick. I have other cables from USB-C to Display-Port and I know only of one that does 2160p@60hz.

jmbwell3• 3 years ago

3) The most fragile part (the wafer in the center of the receptacle) is on the expensive-to-repair device, while the least fragile part is on the cheap-to-replace cable. HDMI makes this same mistake. With USB-A, at least the plastic part on the device is relatively robust, and with Lightning, both plug and socket were rather robust (albeit prone to debris incursion). With older pin-type connectors like VGA and DVI, the fragile pins are completely on the replaceable cable.

bandrami• 3 years ago

The worst connector for that problem is those ----ing antenna leads your laptop has for an M2 wifi card.

petee2• 3 years ago

Im not sure this is true, the part in the cable is just tiny pins and far more vulnerable than the wafer. For years now I've dug woodchips and other junk out of my phones usb-c socket with paperclips and never came close to damage. It seems sufficiently recessed to prevent all but the most aggressive attack.

Edit: in fact, trying now it seems to be perfectly recessed that I can't even push on it from an angle with the connector, it has to go straight in a bit before it even touches, on any of my devices

Hackbraten• 3 years ago

The most fragile part (the wafer in the center of the receptacle) is on the expensive-to-repair device, while the least fragile part is on the cheap-to-replace cable.

Why do you think that the wafer is the most fragile part?

One might argue that the latch mechanism would be the part most exposed to wear and tear due to mechanical stress incurred by plugging and removing. Those side latches are located in the plug, not in the receptacle.

See also figure 3-14 in the USB-C spec [1].

[1] https://www.usb.org/sites/default/files/USB%20Type-C%20Spec%...

imtringued• 3 years ago

My mother bent the "least fragile part" on at least a dozen wires meanwhile the port itself kept working.

dist-epoch• 3 years ago

It was a specific design goal of USB-C to put the fragile part on the cable, not on the device.

For people who are not versed in mechanical connector design it might look like the fragile part is that center wafer.

USB-A is massive compared to USB-C, that's why it's so robust, thick plastic, thick metal, wide connector lanes.

If USB-C is fragile, is just because it's so small, you can easily break it with not so much pressure.

yreg2• 3 years ago

I was told this exact opposite argument about Lightning being worse than USB-C. The line of reasoning was that the springy part breaks and in USB-C the springy bit is in the cable, while in Lightning the pins are sturdy.

Nextgrid2• 3 years ago

The standard is also just terrible even if followed to the letter. The connectors are just too fragile for a day-to-day interconnect, and a fire risk when higher currents are involved.

I've now had to replace 2 USB-C host ports (on expensive Apple devices, where an "official" repair would cost ~50% of the value of the device) despite taking reasonable care of my devices (under which care no other connectors ever failed).

Examining them under a magnifying glass showed that the metal pin delaminated from the plastic middle part of the host connector and was ever so slightly skewed towards the adjacent pin, presumably making enough contact/interference to make the whole thing fail.

In a sane design, a misalignment/skew of <1mm would be well within tolerance and would be a non-issue. Worse, despite the machine being from the same brand that ushered all this crap onto the world, there is no software support or notification to say that something is wrong - the machine just silently stopped charging after a random delay. Very annoying when you plug your machine in to charge and only realize (at the most inconvenient time) that it silently stopped charging and you've now drained whatever battery was remaining.

Even with the new ports, I can make it lose Thunderbolt/DisplayPort connection by bumping the connector. It's probably a mismatch of tolerances between connector and port (maybe my cables are out of spec), but it's never been a problem with any other connector.

petee2• 3 years ago

Are you using Apple, or major-vendor cables? Im curious because delamination of a pin on 2 separate ports implies something catching/dragging on it, maybe there is something either poorly designed, or simply mangled in the end of one of your cables.

npunt4• 3 years ago

I think this is a bit hyperbolic. Once you try to implement any standard in practice to billions of people & devices you're going to find the same constraints and similar trade-offs everywhere.

Manufacturers are going to cheap out, always. There's no way around the fact that goods can get on the market claiming a thing that it doesn't do (perfectly) in practice. Tech is littered with semi-compliance. I hate to kick the can down to 'let consumers figure it out' but there's hardly a realistic alternative, you just can't police ~10 billion cables sold a year across ~10 million retailers. I haven't heard of your first example anywhere actually happening, it sounds theoretical more than widespread in practice in 2023, 8 years into this USB-C thing.

As far as cables with different capabilities, what is the alternative here?

1. Physics of signaling demand certain capabilities require higher quality / more expensive cables. Zero chance you get people or manufacturers lined up around the idea of highest common denominator (e.g. 40gbps capable $30 cable when consumer wants a $3 charging cable), and that's sorta moot anyway because...

2. Standards evolve, and we're all tired of playing the game we've played for 50 years in tech of new physical connectors every few years.

It's either a) you have the same physical connector and different cables, or b) different physical connectors that briefly use the same cables before they become differentiated when standards evolve.

The reality is 'it works but not as good' (speed or charge-wise) is a superior tradeoff to 'I have to buy a totally different cable' in the high % of use cases where 'not as good' is possible, which is stuff like 'charge my phone' or 'plug my printer/audio device/whatever in'.

Honestly the only unforced errors I see with USB-C are consumer education related. USB versioning should be simple (3, 4, 5) not intentionally obtuse ("3.2 gen 2x2"), and something like iconography should be added to indicate premium cable capability (specific higher voltage & bandwidth capabilities) to avoid to play the plug in and try it game.

p1mrx• 3 years ago

USB-IF should publish a table of every possible cable/adapter/receptacle type, with a short alphanumeric code that can be printed or molded onto the connector.

The set of permutations is too large to fit into an icon, but a lookup table allows for unlimited detail.

sokoloff5• 3 years ago

"I have to buy a totally different cable" is something that most of us with over 20 devices with USB-C ports on them have probably experienced, only it's worse than that as it's more like "I have to buy several different totally different cables and try to remember to return the ones that also don't work".

For a time at work, our desks had different docking stations for employees with Mac laptops or HP laptops. USB-C "standard" notwithstanding.

omnibrain• 3 years ago

This could have been as well been a prediction 8 years ago, because in the mean time all of this happened.

regarding 1) look at this post from 2019: https://people.kernel.org/bleung/now-how-many-usb-c-to-usb-c... I imagine it only got worse in the mean time.

regarding 2) I have seen various posts in the past of devices that only work if the cables are connected in a specific orientation. Technical background is discussed here: https://acroname.com/blog/why-usb-c-connections-sometimes-do...

lxgr14• 3 years ago

There's going to be video-only cables

There is no such thing for USB-C.

low-voltage only cables

As far as I know, only the amperage is negotiated; every compliant cable needs to support at least 20 V.

And even then, the minimum is also 3 A, which allows for 60 W to be carried on even the cheapest cables – enough for many use cases. I actually like having lighter and more flexible cables for most of my devices.

The connector is symmetrical but the pins aren't. You can see a wiring scheme of how symmetry is handled [1]; literally manufactures are going to cheap out and not do that and you have 1-way USB-C cables without any kind of orientation markers.

With all the many USB-C headaches I’ve heard of (and only very rarely encountered myself), I’ve never seen that happen.

The most common problem must be using a USB 2 only cable for a use case that requires USB 3 speeds and/or video.

umanwizard• 3 years ago

Yes and even worse, now EU bureaucrats have mandated that Apple give up their resistance and support this inferior connector.

ZekeSulastin• 3 years ago

Apple is one of the companies that helped design USB-C and have been using it for everything except iPhones and AirPods for years now.

Findecanor4• 3 years ago

USB-C plugs are supposed to have 2.0 data pins only on one side. It is only the sockets that should have them on both sides. The other data pins are negotiated.

When USB-C was brand new, I got a flawed breakout board where only the socket's data pins on one side were connected. I did not notice it until it was soldered together and the device got power but no connection when the cable was connected in one orientation. But then I had already built a metal case to fit that breakout board perfectly, so I just left it in.

bigstrat20038• 3 years ago

There's going to be video-only cables; low-voltage only cables; etc and this time everything is usb-c so you can literally only tell which ables work by testing all of the dozen cables instead of the 1-2 USB-As you have.

Whether or not this happens, it will have nothing to do with USB-C's merits as a connector. You could (theoretically) have the same mess happen with USB-A connectors as well.

sillywalk• 3 years ago

Not to mention the entire USB naming scheme.

USB 3 ? or 3x3 or 2x or ...with Thunderbolt or not...

jdjdjdhhd• 3 years ago

I need a round USB connector

andersrs• 3 years ago

But we tried the port for each use case thing in the 90s and it sucks. VGA, Printer port, ps/2 for mouse etc. It's pretty easy for me to tell which usb cable works with my monitor dock because it's a really thick one.

TulliusCicero• 3 years ago

Everyone here constantly complains about USB-C any time it comes up, but my experience has been that it's fucking awesome that so many of my devices have the same cable type: phone, tablet, laptops, USB battery packs, VR headset, Switch, Deck, various game controllers, various retro game handhelds, portable monitor, antigen COVID-19 detector, car battery starter, all kinds of stuff really.

And now that lightning is going the way of the dodo, soon I'll finally be able to consolidate to basically just the one cable type for trips.

crote19• 3 years ago

USB-C is actually surprisingly tricky to screw up.

For example, video-only cables are only possible if they have active electronics - so that means you are buying a very expensive cable which somehow doesn't follow the specs. I know Monoprice does make one, but it starts at $115 and it is explicitly marketed and labelled as video-only.

Low-voltage cables are the same thing. All passive cables can do 100W using 20V, and the 240W ones using 48V are explicitly marketed as such. There are some optical cables which do not transfer power at all, but again you're looking at specialized >$100 stuff. You don't just accidentally grab one of these out of your Box Of Cables.

As far as I am aware, no cable manufacturer cheaped out on the wiring because there is zero reason to. You can't simplify USB 2 cables like that, and anyone selling USB 3 cables wants all pins for it to actually be usable as a data cable.

The biggest problem with USB-C is that the USB Implementers Forum created a very clear design to indicate exactly what each device and cable is capable of - but then manufacturers decided it was ugly and just completely ignored it. If everyone just followed the damn spec there wouldn't be nearly as much confusion.

fragmede4• 3 years ago

You don't just accidentally grab one of these out of your Box Of Cables.

Yes you do. You set up the studio and wire it all up, with all of the devices, and with the right $100 wires and $30 wires and $2 wires. (Along with $50k in equipment.) But then you need to move out for some reason, so you tear it all down and it all gets boxed up and loaded into a truck and then you have nowhere to set that studio back up so then you end up with a box of cables in your living room that then gets shoved into your closet. Now you have a box of cables, some more expensive than others and you are just gonna randomly grab one until you find one with the right ends on but now also the right innards as well which means you'll have to test it.

I am not looking forwards to looking at a tangle of usb-c cables and extracting the one that actually meets my needs. Still better than trying to pull a DB9 through, but still.

carstenhag4• 3 years ago

Bonus: Buy 5 phones from 2023 with their chargers. Buy 5 random USB-C cables. Use 5 cables that were shipped with random stuff (rechargeable lamp, etc).

In my experience you can barely get the phones to survive without their "own" wall charger + cable combination. It's really terrible.

I don't understand how a 120€, 140W MacBook usb-c can't charge my OnePlus 8 at all. Not even with 5V 1A.

mbar842• 3 years ago

I wish they would even just have standardised on a colour coding or label system or something, so people could find out what a cable supports.

mmac_2• 3 years ago

One of my earliest experiences with USB was back in the day where I had a PC without any USB front ports that were free. So I grabbed my USB thumb drive and reached around the back of the PC tower and plugged it in without looking.

USB didn't show up in the O/S. Thought maybe it wasn't formatted correctly and went through some diagnostics. Eventually went for the remove it / plug it back in technique. Had a look at the back of the PC and noticed I'd managed to plug it into an empty Ethernet port.... yeah they're about the same width give or take some tolerance. Also usually placed right next to each other.

Back on topic, I do find those bare/exposed usb keys (like a yubikey) to be quite annoying.

stavros5• 3 years ago

Back on topic, I do find those bare/exposed usb keys (like a yubikey) to be quite annoying.

I guess you trade one annoyance (how to plug them in) for another annoyance (too thick for a wallet/keychain).

gs17• 3 years ago

Done exactly the same thing. No idea why they sized it that way, at least it usually doesn't break anything.

Neil442• 3 years ago

I thought the tongue should have a little bump on the right or left, so if you're upside down you can tell straight away because the connector will want to angle over, rather than wiggling and wondering and doing the standard 3 tries thing.

usrusr4• 3 years ago

Making the part that is PCB on cheap USB sticks protrude a little from the metal rectangle? Would have required slightly deeper sockets, but I like the idea, would have saved some frustration.

Neil442• 3 years ago

Yeah just a little 1mm hump on one side of the plastic tongue, but yeah the 1mm would have to come from somewhere.

SeanLuke• 3 years ago

It was in 1998 that USB made some real headway, courtesy of the iMac G3, the first computer to ship with only USB ports for external devices (there were no serial or parallel ports).

Um, no? The iMac had an Ethernet port, a phone jack for an internal modem, and TWO FIREWIRE PORTS. And Microphone and Speaker jacks.

_moof• 3 years ago

The first iMac was USB only. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IMac_G3#Specifications

moffkalast• 3 years ago

It is genuinely surprising that out of all companies Apple was the one to pioneer USB usage.

Quite the stark contrast with their current modus operandi of always making something custom so it can be as incompatible as possible with anything non-Apple (and so they can sell more dongles). Well until they were dragged kicking and screaming to USB-C by the EU anyway.

runlevel1• 3 years ago

The Original Bondi Blue 233 MHz iMac Rev A (tray-loading CD-ROM) had:

- 2x USB

- 1x 10/100 Ethernet

- 1x phone jack

- Infrared port

- 1x audio input

- 1x audio output†

- 2x headphone ports

†I thought it had two front headphone ports so that two students could share a computer in school labs, but googling for that suggests it was probably a later revision feature.

EDIT: It did indeed have 2 headphone ports on the front: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IMac_G3#/media/File:IMac_G3_Bo...

tuyiown2• 3 years ago

No firewire for the G3, and ethernet, audio jack and rj11 doesn't count for external devices.

detourdog• 3 years ago

The Firewire started with the iMac DV in grey.

k3vinw• 3 years ago

From the article: “Bhatt's idea for the USB was inspired by his own experience as a user dealing with tech frustrations far beyond the scope of a get-it-wrong-the-first-time cable.”

Exactly what made USB so awesome when it first came out. I guess you had to be there.

Ekaros• 3 years ago

D-sub and likes were lot worse. USB is robust and don't need things like screws. Din and mini-din also have similar issues. Compared to either family USB is clearly a more usable design.

stavros5• 3 years ago

TL;DR: Cost.

tommiegannert4• 3 years ago

If we're not going back to circular slip-ring connectors that allow rotation (like TRS or DC plugs,) then the step after the +-90-reversible USB-C is a triangular one. So you only need to rotate it +-30 if you got it wrong. Now I really want a triangular connector. Like in alien-tech movies.

polishdude20• 3 years ago

Let's go further and get a hexagonal one.

jpeanuts• 3 years ago

This is not so crazy - this was exactly the progression in screw drives. First came slotted screws (2-fold rotational symmetry), then Phillips/posidrive/Robertson (4-fold), and now Torx (6-fold). Going back to slotted now is actually irritating.

Of course the constraints and trade-offs are very different... still it would be a piece of cake to plug them in on the backside of a box with your eyes closed.

perilunar5• 3 years ago

What's wrong with circular? There's no wrong way to plug it in.

tommiegannert4• 3 years ago

Nothing to me, for the same reason you gave. I'd love to see them making a comeback.

My guess is they won't come back because modern connectors are so thin that if you made them equally narrow, they'd break/bend easily. (And yes, 3.5mm really is too thick to be a standard size, e.g. in wearables. The outer thickness of the USB-C socket is 3.3mm.)

standardUser• 3 years ago

The entire situation could have been avoided with a notch like a thousand other plugs and connectors have.

sbjs• 3 years ago

Sometime later, I also learned that "three" is usually the magic number for correctly plugging in a USB Type-A device. It's a maddening dance and it begs the question, why wasn't the Universal Serial Bus designed with a reversible connector from the outset?

Honestly when this is the biggest problem you face on a daily basis, your life must be relatively easy.

devit• 3 years ago

If you have a reversible connector, then you might be entangled in a dilemma of which way is the "better" or "optimal" or "canonical" way, while with a non-reversible one there is only one way and thus no dilemma.

And in fact USB-C is not really physically reversible, because the hardware detects which way it's plugged in and permutes the signals, as opposed to mirroring all the wires, so there is indeed a "right" way of inserting an USB-C plug, except it's impossible to tell which it is without a dedicated hardware tester.

lisper• 3 years ago

And indeed there are usb-c hubs that only work in one orientation so we now have the worst of all possible worlds.

ezfe• 3 years ago

I would argue those hubs do not work

Clamchop• 3 years ago

I'm reluctant to consider shoddy or noncompliant implementations as counting against a technology. If I did, then it'd follow that there's no such thing as a good idea, and I could only agree with that if I were having a bad episode of ennui.

mtmail• 3 years ago

permutes the signals

Does that cause a noticable difference, for example lower speeds?

crote19• 3 years ago

No, there are dedicated high-speed "mux chips" for this[0]. You can get them with integrated redrivers to compensate for the inevitable signal quality degradation, if needed.

Once you get into the USB 4 range you're going to need all four lanes anyways, so you can just do the permutation in software.

[0] https://www.ti.com/product/TUSB1142

duskwuff• 3 years ago

the hardware detects which way it's plugged in and permutes the signals

For USB3/4 signals, yes. But the hardware needed to interact with those signals is complex enough that making it also support swapping pins is a minor detail.

The USB2 and power lines, on the other hand, are all present on both sides. This means that simple devices don't need to detect orientation; they can connect the duplicated pins together and everything works.

mananaysiempre2• 3 years ago

A USB 2.0 device is usually supposed[1] to just short the two possible positions of each data pin in its USB-C port (the four power pins are always shorted, of course, as are the four ground ones). Orientation sensing only comes into play when you start using the SuperSpeed lanes (for signal interference reasons).

[1] https://www.microchip.com/en-us/application-notes/an1953, 1.3.1

tester756• 3 years ago

I can swear I've felt that when I incorrectly plugged my USB-C to dock station, then I had some crazy issues e.g related to bluetooth. I tried restarts, adapter unplugs, etc, etc.

But when I unplugged the cable and reversed it then the issue disappeared

cushpush• 3 years ago

But in an effort to keep it as cheap as possible, the decision was made to go with a design that, in theory, would give users a 50/50 chance of plugging it in correctly (you can up the odds by looking at the inside first, or identifying the logo).

I despise this "design decision." Literally bakes in the 50% of the time you plug it in the wrong orientation and lose seconds of your life. Who cares if the sands of time are moving more rapidly than asteroids? We can save money and make more of these badboys to fill the landfills with once they're obsolete. Hard to argue that logic that clearly won via market dynamics. But where are we now?

TylerE• 3 years ago

If they were going to do that they at least could have used a D shaped connector or something so the orientation of both the plug and the port are obvious, even in bad lighting / from an awkward angle.

chrisco255• 3 years ago

All I can say is that before USB 1.0, the myriad of connections on a PC motherboard were ridiculous. USB was leaps and bounds better beyond PS/2, and VGA and various serial and parallel ports would require you to physically screw in the plug. Just look at: https://www.electronicshub.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/Po...

It was a nightmare. And virtually none of those ports would self-install drivers when a device was plugged into it. USB 1.0 was magic when it came out.

dimal• 3 years ago

Agreed. Everyone forgets how awful it was and even though USB wasn't perfect, it was a huge improvement over the status quo. For that, I can forgive the inventors for making a mistake. Nobody's perfect. The travesty is that it took so long to correct the issue.

mixmastamyk• 3 years ago

Someday we'll look back and laugh (or cry) at our early USB struggles.

Hah, sounds like the editor is someone too young to have used serial/parallel/vga ports. Early business PCs, for what ever reason[1] were built like tanks. They weighed dozens of kgs/pounds. And the connectors were often screwed in with a screwdriver for good measure.

Yes, you could wing it when being sloppy, but they weren't always very tight and cables heavy so you'd want them screwed in for a long-term installation to avoid issues.

When USB came out it was a revelation that you just needed to pop it in and were done. Yes, you'd have to look at it first, but that was the same with every other port of before that. I remember PS/2 being perhaps hardest to line up correctly.

So USB 1.0 fixed one problem, but not every problem. Not exactly a reason to cry.

[1] Probably inertia from main/minicomputers which were serious installations and needed to keep running through wartime. :-/

jtaft• 3 years ago

Bending a pin stunk. I remeber jamming a flat head screwdriver into the port to try and straighten

Cockbrand• 3 years ago

USB A to Micro USB cables with reversible connectors on both ends have been available for a few years - much too late, but still useful. I bought some on AliExpress, and while probably violating some specs, they have been working nicely for me so far.

elondaits• 3 years ago

But in an effort to keep it as cheap as possible, the decision was made to go with a design that, in theory, would give users a 50/50 chance of plugging it in correctly

They overlooked the statistically significant case where it takes more than two tries to plug it in correctly. Knowing you might have been wrong makes you prematurely abandon an attempt where you had it set the right way.

ghaff• 3 years ago

I used to know one of the people involved in the spec at Intel and he long claimed to regret they couldn’t find a (presumably politically acceptable) way to make it reversible.

theogravity• 3 years ago

Making USB reversible to begin with would have necessitated twice as many wires and twice as many circuits

Is this still true with USB-C?

eep_social• 3 years ago

From other comments it sounds like no. Instead, every port must detect the orientation and switch to using the correct lines in software. IIUC, each cable also needs a small IC to assist with this.

Findecanor4• 3 years ago

Reversibility for USB 2.0 data signals is mechanical: There are data pins on both sides and only one set of pins get connected. The socket side connects both sets.

There is only one more wire in a USB-C 2.0 cable: it is used to signal orientation and if an end is a power source, sink or a headphone adaptor.

USB-3 signals are more complicated though. There can be up to two bidirectional high-speed channels. The aforementioned sensing pin is used to figure out if those channels need to be swapped or not.

pmontra• 3 years ago

Looking at the logo on the plug is enough to get it right at the first attempt, but only for horizontal ports on a laptop or desktop. For vertical ports or ports on the top (chargers have both types) it's not so easy.

snakeyjake• 3 years ago

Making USB reversible to begin with would have necessitated twice as many wires and twice as many circuits, and would have doubled the cost.

This is... not correct.

You can make USB reversible with 1 extra pin and 1 extra wire. Grounds on pins 1 and 5, data on pins 2 and 4, and VCC on pin 3. Then have those pins on both sides of the plug and a socket with a single set of contacts on one side.

That's BASICALLY what Apple did with lightning.

Then you implement auto crossover detection, (edit: Gah! you don't even have to do that just flip the flipping wires) which had been around for years and is dirt cheap, in the hub. It would have been like, six, more transistors in the hub IC.

edit: I completely forgot that reversible USB 2.0 plugs already exist and use a simpler (and cheaper) method. They just tend not to be so reliable because of the thinner materials and the fact that they're not spec-compliant so they tend to be grey market jobs made for the lowest price possible.

Here is one: https://www.amazon.com/Tripp-Lite-Universal-Reversible-UR050...

No doubling of wires or circuits required, just a thin double-sided PCB.

Was the connector form-factor inherited from an earlier project and the players didn't want to design a new one?

gzalo• 3 years ago

Then you implement auto crossover detection, dwhich had been around for years

Mdi-x/auto crossover for ethernet was introduced in 1999, that is after USB (1996) was designed, not sure of the technique was known at that time

dboreham3• 3 years ago

There were auto-crossover RS-232 boxes going back deep into the 1980s.

userbinator5• 3 years ago

You can't do "auto crossover" with USB because it needs to distinguish between D+/D- for speed selection.

https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/73295/in-a-u...

It works for Ethernet because the transmit and receive lanes are separate, but with USB, there's only one pair used for both directions.

crote19• 3 years ago

Not really relevant.

Ethernet needs crossover because it has dedicated transmit/receive pairs, but USB 1.x/2.0 uses a single wire pair for both tx & rx. Ethernet crossover is pretty much identical to serial null modem cables, and those were around for a few decades by then.

USB "crossover" of the single differential wire pair would be an inversion of 0 and 1. Pretty trivial to do once you figure out a way to communicate crossover or not.

whoooooo123• 3 years ago

The problem with USB-a isn't that it's non reversible, it's that it's non-reversible _and_ rectangular, so it's not clear at a glance which way round it should go.

All they had to do was make the connector have a non-symmetrical shape so that it's immediately obvious which way round it goes when you pick it up - you could do it without even looking. Think of how much time we'd have collectively saved with this minor design change.

davidgay• 3 years ago

That only works when you can see the place you're connecting to, or have used it many times.

I've definitely cursed many times failing to plug in non-rectangular VGA, serial and parallel cables ;)

[edit: it is still better, but not a panacea]

stevage• 3 years ago

Even having a bump on the rubber moulding as part of the standard would have solved the problem.

m_0x• 3 years ago

All they had to do was make the connector have a non-symmetrical shape so that it's immediately obvious which way round it goes when you pick it up - you could do it without even looking. Think of how much time we'd have collectively saved with this minor design change.

I disagree. When connecting an HDMI cable I sometimes have issues, especially if in a weird angle.

However I do concede is faster to connect an HDMI than a USB

jonny_eh• 3 years ago

For an example of an asymmetrical "rectangle", look at HDMI: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HDMI#/media/File:HDMI_connecto...

themerone• 3 years ago

They did that from the beginning with USB-B, but they never standardized an orientation.

mcny• 3 years ago

Just curious if you have seen the special irregular USB A plug for the Lenovo Yoga 3 Pro. If so, what are your thoughts on it?

https://ae01.alicdn.com/kf/HTB1XeKTDHSYBuNjSspiq6xNzpXae.jpg...

imgur mirror https://i.imgur.com/RQvMfhT.png

random newegg link: https://www.newegg.com/p/2MV-00MD-00DX3

lttlrck• 3 years ago

Right, don't make a non-reversible connector appear reversible... I would have thought this is Connector 101.

It's so bad it takes me 3 attempts to plug in USB-A blind, at least 50% of the time.

somat2• 3 years ago

Right, the only thing worse than USB was the PS2 port. What sort of madness drive someone to invent a round connector that is keyed.

Hyperbole aside, there are some very good reasons to go with round connectors, it can be very strong and you can put a big nut on them to have an extremely secure lock. however the PS2 connector is nether of these things, It would require a much more robust key to work well.

The worst connector I ever encountered was on a old ATI capture card, it was the same barrel as a ps2 connector but had about 15 pins. Everything had to be perfect for it to insert, a tiny scratch or a slightly bent pin, it was not going anywhere.

kelnos5• 3 years ago

I guess it would be easier with the larger size of the USB-A connector, but I still struggle to plug in micro-USB cables sometimes, as it's still difficult to figure out its orientation at a glance.

fennecfoxy• 3 years ago

Tbf I think the most prevalent issue with USB was from people plugging them in where they cannot see the port properly, ie the back of a computer tower (most often) or back of TV/console etc.

Not really sure that that's USB's fault so much as a lack of front USB ports. I think in those cases the consumer can chose to get some sort of hub that's easier to access/can be pulled out from behind their setup.

Now that C exists though, idk if we really need to go much further. Connector much smaller than it is now will become fragile.

I've always thought they could add a single fiber core to USB cables for some "ultra high speed" standard, since USB4 is predicted to top out at 80GBps, but we could get 50Tbps or so over a single fiber if we really needed to.

But after owning several fiber cables, for networking and HDMI fiber based cables...yeah they're far, far too weak to replace copper. Just look at 'em wrong and they snap/break.

Plus tbf if we get 80gbps from usb4...the problem then becomes that we don't reaaaally have a use case for that speed. Maybe network adaptors, but beyond that...I mean a modern SSD will saturate that with a sequential read I suppose, but still.

userbinator5• 3 years ago

There are also reversible USB plugs that are a single "tongue", inheriting that design from USB drives that don't have any plug to speak of but look more like a card-edge connector:

https://www.pcgamer.com/youre-telling-me-we-could-have-had-r...

https://2b.com.eg/en/2b-cv177-cable-usb-type-a-reversible-pl...

Waterluvian• 3 years ago

I got these by accident, spent a month thinking I had incredible USB skills, then discovered and became fascinated by the tongue.

musicale• 3 years ago

PCgamer:

Incidentally, the late Steve Jobs deserves a tip-of-the-hat for helping USB become a long-lasting standard. It was in 1998 that USB made some real headway, courtesy of the iMac G3, the first computer to ship with only USB ports for external devices (there were no serial or parallel ports). That came three years after USB 1.0 debuted, with a data rate of 12Mbps.

Also PCgamer:

Given that it was a protocol designed to counter the typically Apple expense of sticking Firewire onto a motherboard, cost was the biggest reason for the eventual success of USB as a thing

Apple started building FireWire 400 into Macs when 12Mbps USB 1.0 was not really an equivalent. USB 2.0 didn't make the cut for the first generation iPod but was supported on subsequent models.

dylan6046• 3 years ago

edit: Gah! you don't even have to do that just flip the flipping wires)

Isn't that essentially what all ethernet cables do? it's not like this something never done before.

JoblessWonder2• 3 years ago

When was Auto MDI-X introduced? A quick google failed to get me an answer but I remember USB being available while I still needed a crossover cable to hook up 2 switches.

londons_explore• 3 years ago

Ethernet hardware now has auto-crossover. However, that hasn't always been the case. There was a good decade in the 90's where you needed a special cable wiring if you wanted to connect two computers vs a computer to a switch.

kybernetikos2• 3 years ago

Couldn't original USB have used TRRS? That's better than reversible - an infinite number of orientations are allowed.

userbinator5• 3 years ago

That shorts together a lot of the contacts as you're plugging it in.

There are of course various devices which somehow ended up using TRRS for USB, but unplugging/plugging those while powered is definitely not recommended:

https://www.reddit.com/r/ErgoMechKeyboards/comments/rt083u/a...

http://www.totekinternational.com/35mm-trrs-to-usb-a-male-ca...

https://pinoutguide.com/PortableDevices/ipod_shuffle_pinout....

eternityforest2• 3 years ago

They'd have to make it not fit in a normal TRRS hole or use some fancy power negotiation stuff to avoid blowing up headphones. It would be cool though. But perhaps easier to mess up than USB. Cheap headphone cables aren't great.

HeyLaughingBoy• 3 years ago

TR/TRRS have very small contact patches since you're connecting to the tangent of a circle. That's not good for anything carrying more than a very small current. And even then, it can be an unreliable contact.

jbverschoor• 3 years ago

I think he DID explain why: he didn’t and doesn’t know how

randyrand• 3 years ago

To help visualize:

    1: GND
    2: DATA +/-
    3: VCC
    4: DATA +/-
    5: GND

userbinator5• 3 years ago

With that pinout you'd end up with one orientation being full/high-speed and the other being low speed.

Edit: see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USB_communications#Signaling_s...

levidos• 3 years ago

Can't that square metal be used as ground?

kelnos5• 3 years ago

Ugh, when I read that line I immediately came here to comment, but you beat me to it.

I really really really hope that this was just an error by the journalist, and not Bhatt essentially lying to justify the choice.

dheera3• 3 years ago

Or just put + and - through a rectifier and you don't need an extra pin.

Data lines -- use differential signalling and polarity determined by whether +/- got reversed by the rectifier or not.

Or do like Comcast does and put all bidirectional data through 1 conductor at multi-gigabit speeds.

crote19• 3 years ago

How are you going to implement the rectifier, though?

The usual implementation is using diodes, but that means you lose twice the diode forward voltage to the rectifier. Even with a Schottky diode that means you are losing 0.5V-1.0V. That's a 10%-20% loss at 5V!

You could use a transistor-based "ideal diode" solution, but that's not going to be cheap - especially in the 90s.

ilyt8• 3 years ago

Maybe if you have no clue about electronics don't talk about electronics...

Or do like Comcast does and put all bidirectional data through 1 conductor at multi-gigabit speeds.

And how much modem's transceiver cost ? And how does that compare to cost of computer mouse or other cheap USB peripherals.

crote19• 3 years ago

If you want to do it properly:

    1: GND/sense
    2: DATA +/-
    3: VCC
    4: DATA +/-
    5: GND/sense

Have the host side connect only pin 1 to GND and leave pin 5 floating, but have the device side connect both 1&5 to gnd, with individual pullups for 1 & 5 to VCC.

The device will sense LO on 1 and HI on 5 if either both sides are plugged in straight or both sides are plugged in reversed, but it will sense HI on 1 and LO on 5 if exactly one of them is reversed. This allows the device to detect when inversion of D+/D- is needed.

ilyt8• 3 years ago

You have to consider that initially it was supposed to be connector for stuff like mouses or keyboards or gamepads or printers. 12Mbits.

But yeah that was only one of many misdesigns along the way. Like making turning ports on and off optional features, mini-usb (seriously, none other usb version I've seen failed as often as mini-usb connectors), just how overcomplicated USB-PD is, or the recent mess in USB-C cabling.

aidenn0• 3 years ago

I still am more annoyed by it being the same width as an RJ-45 connector. Worse than not being able to plug it in is having it plug in and not work.

nxobject• 3 years ago

In the same vein, USB-A has a plugin-nable space barely the same diameter as a headphone jack – there have been a few times that I've plugged a headphone without looking into an adjacent USB receptacle. It happened surprisingly often when MacBooks had USB-A.

whoopdedo• 3 years ago

As annoying as this has been when it happened to me, I also have wondered if they did it on purpose to make it easier for assemblers. If the tooling needed for USB, Ethernet, and eSATA are all the same size you can save cost through reuse.

crote19• 3 years ago

Even worse: male USB-C can fit inside female USB-A - and it is quite common for female USB-C ports to be placed right next to female USB-A ports.

I learned this the hard way - turns out your computer will just suddenly hard power off when you try to do this.

chrismorgan• 3 years ago

Fun fact: the Nokia 2780 Flip, despite using USB-C, only accepts the cable in one orientation. Put a cable in upside down, and nothing happens. Confirmed with the charger it comes with and one C–C cable that I already possessed.

(Additional fun fact: the box says it uses Micro-USB.)

Animats• 3 years ago

If the plug actually complies with the spec, and has the metal shroud as it is supposed to, it works fine, and will not go in backwards. It's making USB connectors which are just a piece of PC board that's the problem. Looking at you, Yubikey.

aranchelk2• 3 years ago

My take on USB-A: aside from audio connectors that have axial symmetry (and have no meaningful orientation), I never used any reversible computer cables prior to USB-C, and that’s not the main issue. Nor is it the axis of symmetry of the casing allowing failed upside down plugin attempts.

The shitty part of USB-A is that the tactile feedback of being slightly misaligned is identical to it being upside down. My experience tells me no amount of vigorous jiggling or extreme self-confidence will ever allow for consistent average 1.5 attempt plugins.

All the standards before USB were in my memory even less user-friendly — trying in vain to reach behind a heavy computer and unscrew the two jammed retaining bolts holding in a serial, parallel, scsi, vga, or DVI plug with slippery bent plastic jacketed heads. Almost zero clearance from the plug case, that really did suck. Screw it in slightly loser next time, now you’ve got a flickering monitor, dummy.

And ps2/mini-din connectors sucked too - having the connector off-center or at the wrong rotation also felt quite indistinguishable.

postmodest• 3 years ago

At least PS/2 cables were mostly made with "keyed" rubber jackets where one side was flat and the other rounded, so in the dark you could tell which way was up.

(Though, that keyboard and mouse were different ports was stupid, so it loses points there)

userbinator5• 3 years ago

Keyboard was always the one closest to the mobo, since it was there first (and was originally a larger, more robust DIN connector); the mouse piggybacked on top of that later.

lxgr14• 3 years ago

Never have I been able to successfully plug a PS/2 port in by haptics alone.

I can totally see how they were designed to theoretically allow for it; practically, the tactile feedback for the correct orientation is just way too subtle.

And regarding the two different ports: I can't remember (or rather, I was never motivated to revisit the plugs once connected to experiment, since it was such a pain) – was there a technical reason for that, or could modern mainboards/BIOSes/OSes detect and correct for that?

kelnos5• 3 years ago

But then you have to remember the orientation of the port itself!

That sounds silly, but I forgot a non-trivial number of times.

barrkel• 3 years ago

PS/2 connectors were a regression on AT DIN & D sub 9-pin serial for most practical purposes.

The only upside of PS/2 was a higher mouse data rate, particularly with high monitor refresh rates, made mouse movement smoother. You didn't get this for free in Windows though, you needed a registry tweak to tell the mouse driver to bump the sample rate.

The huge downside was that PS/2 peripherals couldn't be inserted when the PC is turned on. They need to be inserted at boot time, and aren't detected if they're plugged in later.

And the keyboard and mouse connectors were physically the same but not generally switchable.

lxgr14• 3 years ago

trying in vain to reach behind a heavy computer and unscrew the two jammed retaining bolts holding in a serial, parallel, scsi, vga, or DVI plug with slippery bent plastic jacketed heads

Oh yes, that brings back very bad memories.

Only gradually did it dawn on me that nothing really bad actually happens if I didn't screw the connectors tight on DVI/VGA etc. :)

(Yes, these are technically not plug-and-play, but the occasional disconnect sure beat all the banging my head on the desk and swearing profusely every time I changed something with my personal setup.)

fireflash38• 3 years ago

It's like VGA cables came with loctite pregooped on with how hard they were to unscrew.

GuB-42• 3 years ago

This is what I do with these (terrible) screw-in connectors.

- Loosely plug in the connector

- Screw in the right side, relatively tight

- Use the right screw as a pivot point, by pushing the plug to the left, this will properly seat in the connector

- Screw in the left side until it touches, do not tighten

To unscrew, use the left side as a pivot point by pushing the plug to the right, this should loosen the right screw, unscrew it, then, unscrew the left side, which shouldn't be tight if you did it correctly.

Note: you can switch left for right and right for left.

The general idea is to wiggle left and right by using the screws as pivots. Do this to unscrew if it is too tight. If only one side is screwed in (don't do that) and it is too tight, screw in the other side and use the pivot trick.

I don't like not screwing these in as they have a tendency to come loose, especially since they also have poor feedback and chances are that they aren't properly inserted to begin with.

And side note: another thing I hate with this plugs is that when you pull out the cable, the plug tends to grab ever other cable that's on their way. In fact, some of these plugs look suspiciously like boat anchors and seem to be just as effective at grabbing stuff.

layer8• 3 years ago

The D-sub connectors were pretty intuitive, as far as I can remember. The 9-pin joystick ports never caused much trouble.

Making the USB connectors symmetric in their outer shape but not symmetrically pluggable was really inexcusable. When it came out I remember thinking that it was worse than any of the existing connectors. And this is supposed to be the new “universal” connector?

bigstrat20038• 3 years ago

The D-sub connectors were pretty intuitive, as far as I can remember.

I never personally had a problem with them, but I can attest that people did. At my first job (a small computer shop), we had multiple customers who tried to jam their D-sub connector on wrong, and broke one or more pins off. Since this was back in the day when the cable was hard wired into the monitor, that generally meant they had to buy a new monitor.

Findecanor4• 3 years ago

I fail to understand what you mean with plugging a mini-DIN plug "off-center". Please explain!

I find it easy to use by feel alone. You can feel when the sleeve fits the socket. Then you can rotate it in the socket until it can go all the way in.

ghusbands• 3 years ago

Given the number of bent pins I've seen on mini-DIN connectors, I think people don't find it as easy as you do.

aranchelk2• 3 years ago

You’re reaching around the back of a computer and you can’t see the exact location of the mini-din jack, you have to angle the plug normal to the plane of the computer back (more or less), you have to center the plug (translate the plug horizontally and vertically) to align it with the jack, and you have to rotate it so the the indentation (and of course pins) align.

But… My old computers all had a slippery steel plate surrounding the jacks, and the jacks had plastic centers aligned flush with the plate, having the plug overlap the steel plate never felt terribly different from only having the rotation wrong.

xorcist• 3 years ago

Ah, the token ring connectors. Not reversible, but genderless.

AnotherGoodName2• 3 years ago

This is somewhat related as it's the next step of the above.

The floating tongue of the USB connection is in the socket, not the on the cable. As in the most fragile part of the design is on the device side, not the cable side. This means that you can more easily break your $1000 device not the $2 cable. They repeated this mistake with USB-C as well.

It's not hard to make a port where the cable is the free floating tongue and the device is a more robust socket that wraps around that fragile piece. I know everyone's happy about the iPhone moving to USB-C but the tongue on the cable side that it had was much better. Anyone who's tripped on a cable and broken a USB socket can attest to this.

mtoner23• 3 years ago

Idk, lightning has the opposite problem where the contacts are exposed and degrade very quickly on the cable and need to be replaced constantly. Great for apple. And lightning has the gripping pins on the phone which degrade rather quickly too over repeated use. No cable is perfect I fear

ngcc_hk2• 3 years ago

Basically buy 2 Lenovo X due to the broken usb-c power slot. There is a backup one but for business notebook you fly with you you really do not want a broken notebook.

cyberax2• 3 years ago

That's incorrect. USB-C design maximizes the device longevity by removing springs from the device that typically get worn down quickly.

The cable is responsible for the grip. You do get a protruding tongue on the device side, but it's well protected.

qingcharles• 3 years ago

I was surprised this mistake was made with USB-C. Surely a committee voted on this and knew what they were doing? Isn't Lightning the opposite way around?

hedora4• 3 years ago

The best feature of those little thumb screws was that the computer-side mount could become unscrewed and fall off when you were trying to remove the cable. On some machines, it was held in with a tiny little nut on the inside of the case. The nut was just the right size to fall onto a motherboard and bridge PCB traces or exposed I/O pins.

Of course, there was no way to detect this by feel.

ikari_pl• 3 years ago

now this sounds like you've had a terrible accident.

worst I ever had was the computer side falling out on the outside (no bolt, it was just threaded into the case itself)

reilly3000• 3 years ago

This brought back many bad memories of trying to straighten a bent pin with needle-nose pliers and other tools that weren’t made of the job.

sitkack• 3 years ago

I find small flat bladed screw drivers work well.

polynomial• 3 years ago

the tactile feedback of being slightly misaligned is identical to it being upside down.

Did that come out right?

(Asking as I have a similar hypothesis- depending on your answer.)

zajio1am• 3 years ago

unscrew the two jammed retaining bolts holding in a serial, parallel, scsi, vga, or DVI

Yes, it was kind of annoying, but OTOH it provided reliable robustness. Today, many connectors are just too prone to unintentional disconnect. And in the case of optional locks, like e.g. on some DP cables, one never know if the cable has the lock or is just stuck.

avereveard• 3 years ago

3.5 mm audio jack: I'm absolutely perfect

dboreham3• 3 years ago

"Ajay Bhatt, widely considered the inventor of USB..."

Interesting. I had been told long ago that my fellow-Inmosian Dave Wooten was instrumental. And sure enough:

"David was principal architect for USB 1.0, USB 1.1, and USB 2.0."

from https://ece.ncsu.edu/honor/david-wooten/

jdblair2• 3 years ago

I used to "bedazzle" my USB cables. Bedazzling is when you decorate something with little plastic reflective jewel stickers. I always put the jewel in the same side (the "top") so I could feel which way the cable should be oriented. Then I could be confident I had the orientation correct without looking.

I called this USBedazzling. The other folks in the office didn't think it was a funny as I did.

dylan6046• 3 years ago

what if the port was in the opposite orientation, or worse, vertically oriented?

havefunbesafe• 3 years ago

Then you'd have to close your laptop and walk into the woods forever, I suppose...

deathanatos2• 3 years ago

Bedazzle the port on the "front" side, whichever way that happens to point. Then just align bedazzling.

Or just bedazzle the port if it's wrong. I've only ever once encountered a backwards port. Cough HP cough

jdblair2• 3 years ago

I knew my own gear and how the ports were oriented.

palata4• 3 years ago

I don't really get why people hate USB-A so much. I almost always plug my USB-A in the first try, because most of my devices have a clear up/down (e.g. a laptop or a docking station), and the plastic part always goes down.

Of course the vertical ports behind a machine are a bit harder to access, but... well anyway they are. And usually those are not the ones I unplug/replug often.

LoganDark3• 3 years ago

My USB hub will allow me to plug in a USB-A connector the wrong way. When I do, it has some sort of fault and resets all the ports. I don't know how this is physically possible, but it's somehow worse then requiring 3 attempts.

sytelus• 3 years ago

More interesting question for me is what exactly made USB possible? I understand that parallel communication wasn't possible because even for small differences in wire length, data on each wire will arrive at different times and that limits speed. So, people went with serial communication. But what exactly enabled high speed bit transfer? Why wasn't it possible before? Similarly, why USB2 speeds weren't possible before? What technical advances made it possible?

labcomputer• 3 years ago

Well, high speed serial coms existed before USB, so the premise of the question is a bit wrong. RS-422 officially supports 10 Mbps over short distances, for example, and various serial WAN protocols supported >100Mbps over copper before USB launched.

I would argue that what USB (1.1-2.0) does differently from previous serial peripheral ports is mostly software and standardization, and really relate to making it cheap and simple for "normal people" to use:

1. USB 1.1 supports only two bit rates (1.5 and 12 Mbps), which is autoconfigured before device enumeration. 12 = 8 * 1.5, so the clock divider is cheap and easy.

2. USB limits cables to fairly short lengths (<=5m) compared to earlier serial ports (RS-422 supports 10 Mbps at 15m)

3. USB (pre-OTG extensions) rigorously enforced the idea of a "host" (upstream) and "device" (downstream), at both the protocol and physical connector level (which greatly simplifies things--for example, you can't create a loop, and don't need STP to detect it). A child can easily see that a B (device) socket doesn't fit an A (host) plug.

4. USB device enumeration and configuration are extensively software based, and USB defines a number of standard device classes so that many common types of devices (e.g., keyboards, mice) don't need specific drivers.

5. One thing that USB does that's less common among serial peripheral interfaces is to use a single differential pair for data going in both directions (it's time-shared: so the host polls the device then the device responds). The pin-count is less than a "regular" RS-422 port, but you still get the advantages of differential signaling.

6. USB carries power with only one more pin than needed to create a minimal bidirectional serial data connection, so "lite" devices don't need a separate power connector (ignoring very slow protocols like "1-wire").

7. USB does some funny things with packet framing (like NRZI encoding and bit-stuffing) and some things to help reduce device cost (like the JKJKJK packet preamble to sync the device baud-rate generator and using SE1/SE0 states for device disconnect and bus reset signaling), but none of that is really fundamental to making a 10Mbps-class serial interface.

omgJustTest• 3 years ago

I think people underestimate how cheaply products are made.

Making USB reversible to begin with would have necessitated twice as many wires and twice as many circuits, and would have doubled the cost.

Adding more wires, even if it is a few is not the cheapest one and therefore not the one that wins. The relative convenience of a feature is always trumped in early days by cost-to-produce.

USB-C recently introducing the symmetry of the connector does not imply that manufacturers will use it... ie you have a symmetric connector that performs differently based on how it was plugged.

quickthrower2• 3 years ago

Also, coming from serial/parallel ports, people are not going to moan that the USB is not reversible.

pseudosavant• 3 years ago

I think people really need to think about USB Type A in the context of the connectors it was 'competing' with: DSUB9 (VGA), RS-232 (serial), DB-25 (parallel), PS/2 (keyboard/mouse). These were, by modern standards, complete garbage connectors. Huge. Didn't stay plugged in securely unless the connector had screws. Only went one way.

USB 1 stayed plugged in, required no screws, had higher bandwidth than any data port you'd find on a typical PC, the wires were much thinner, and it could even power low power devices! Yes, a design that doesn't take three tries (my average) to get right would be nice, but it exceeded every existing port by miles. Audio jacks were the only ports that didn't have a direction back then.

Findecanor4• 3 years ago

Also, those older plugs were more or less not hot-pluggable. The computer had to be off (really off, not standby) before you plugged/unplugged a cable, or you'd risk damaging the port and/or the device.

The only exception I know of is that Apple Desktop Bus (mini-DIN) had been designed (by Woz !) to be supposed to be hot-pluggable but Apple cheaped out on overcurrent protection so it never was.

Edit: I forgot: in a MIDI connection there is an opto-coupler behind the receiving end, to electrically separate devices.

NegativeK2• 3 years ago

The idea of trying to plug a serial, parallel, or VGA cable into a computer blindly seems hilariously unlikely.

And I distinctly remember getting excited about upgrading to a motherboard that supported USB for the hot-pluggability. I was overexcited, but still.

perilunar5• 3 years ago

Audio jacks were the only ports that didn't have a direction back then.

On computers perhaps. There were plenty of round connectors in other uses though, e.g. Edison screw, Belling-Lee (TV/FM connectors), RCA, BNC, type C and type N RF, TOSLINK, etc.

Most of those wouldn't have been much use for a computer serial port though. Something like TOSLINK, with power and optic fibre would have been great. Too expensive at the time I think. But a round TRRP-style jack would have worked and been cheap.

Agree that USB-A was much better than the existing alternatives though.

quitit• 3 years ago

I think there is value in remembering that this was an era where peripherals were plugged in with a view of semi-permanence, most plugs even had screws. I also remember thinking at the time how much easier USB was to use than trying to align a PS/2 connector.

Despite the obvious design drawback, I can't blame intel entirely, a big contributor to the problem was that the ports were still being positioned in hard to access areas by computer makers. The first iMac design was a bit more forward thinking in this regard, whereby USB ports were prominently positioned on either side of the keyboard, this made it very easy to plug in the USB mouse and use the other for something like a USB stick. The problem with the type A design isn't just the orientation issue, the rectangular port design provides very little tolerance for off-angle insertion, having the port in full view helped a lot with insertion.

nerpderp825• 3 years ago

USB was a scam from Intel (and Microsoft) to put the PC at center of "your digital life". They both feared that Firewire would be able to send digital streams around and no PC would be necessary.

This man was ideal for the job of USB inventor.

snarfy• 3 years ago

I was always hoping for a 3.5mm jack for a connector.

Radially symmetric, it can go in any direction. I've heard arguments this could cause connection issues since it could rotate while connected, causing small contact misses, but I think that could be designed around.

idonotknowwhy• 3 years ago

I just realized, all this time, i should have known which way the USB ports were on the back of the pc. All I had to do was visualize the motherboard inside the case and I'd immediately and easily know which way to plug the cables in without looking.

Wish I'd thought of this 15 years ago...

pbj1968• 3 years ago

Anyone bitching about USB does not remember the horrors of serial ports. My favorite cables were the ones where the connector housing metal was so soft it was actually indeed possible to plug them in upside down and bend all your pins. Spent lots of time in the 90s with tweezers straightening pins.

All he had to do was make one side of the connector rounded. But still a vast improvement.

sacnoradhq• 3 years ago

Backwards rationalization / cognitive dissonance for a poor engineering tradeoff.

The cost of zillions of the same panel mount connector will converge to dirt cheap. Although cents matter, user experience matters more if everyone hates your craptastic cheap design. Thankfully, Apple came along and gave the world USB-C which simply increased the bandwidth and current with the convenience of rotational symmetry. A USB-C panel-mount connector costs $0.492 in bulk. Fancy rugged and waterproof ones are $2.18. Micro USB B costs $0.45 in bulk. 10% increase in cost: big whoop for everything except Arduinos and portable kids' night lights.

tamimio• 3 years ago

It’s just a bad (or rather a first iteration) design and no need to justify it, because it’s ok to have that in early designs.

yieldcrv• 3 years ago

proud to say that I’m almost all usbc

my ILEC camera, PS5 game controller, iPhone, laptop, work laptop donglebook, all charge from the same cord and power block when they need to

my portable speaker is still microusb on one side and usb 2.0 or whatever nomenclature on the other side

airpods are primarily inductive charging, but it has a lightning cable port, along with my apple keyboard and mouse when I need to connect them to a different computer and go wireless again

monkpit• 3 years ago

The 3.5mm jack is a triumph of design, change my mind. The tactile sensation of getting it hooked up is a thing of beauty.

zoomablemind• 3 years ago

I wonder why the USB connector had to be that wide? And with so many tries on the narrow end to follow on?

somat2• 3 years ago

Reversible is overrated. what I always liked were the genderless connectors. Actual engineers probably don't like them because making a long cable by chaining a bunch bunch of short cables together is almost always a bad idea so they are very rare. The only two I have ever seen in the wild was the IBM bus and tag cables(a strong contender for the most manly data connector I have ever seen) and some unknown telephone headset cord with a seriously over engineered connector.

The bus and tag connector: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bus_and_Tag

hotshoe• 3 years ago

Seems like it always took me 3 steps to plug in a usb-a cable.

1. Doesn't easily insert so assume I've got it upside down. Flip. 2. Still doesn't easily insert so inspect, and realize it had it right the first time. 3. Insert for real this time.

I don't miss usb-a, but it was a vast improvement over the rs-232 and parallel port cables that preceded it.

bschne• 3 years ago

(…) the decision was made to go with a design that, in theory, would give users a 50/50 chance of plugging it in correctly

I love how they write „in theory“

johnsanders• 3 years ago

Has no one told the one about the USB guy's funeral? They put him in the ground, but realized he was the wrong way 'round so they pulled him out and put him in the other way.

deathanatos2• 3 years ago

you can up the odds by looking at the inside first, or identifying the logo

No, this really only increases your frustration once you find out that some USB manufacturers can't tell their head from their *** when it comes to making the connector.

ASUS, I'm looking at you.

davidw• 3 years ago

Someone once calculated that a few seconds of fiddling with USB connectors across millions of people was actually entire years worth of wasted time.

Actually, I just made that up, but it seems kind of plausible.

raymond_goo• 3 years ago

The problem wasn't reversibility, it was not being able to feel the right side in the dark or behind components.

jongjong2• 3 years ago

I don't know if this is common but I've encountered an issue with two different devices with the latest reversible USBs that it would only charge if I plugged it in one way and not the other. I would plug my phone and I had to check the screen to see if it was charging or not; if not, I had to unplug, turn the connector around and plug back in the other way. I remember longing for the older micro USB where the right orientation was obvious. Obviously my phone port must had been damaged; but I suspect that because this happened to me with two different phones, it may be related to fragility of the new ports due to smaller wires or something... Anyone else had this issue?

kelnos5• 3 years ago

Yep, probably damage to either the connector on the cable, or the port on the device. Does the connector also feel a bit looser when you plug it in the non-working way? (Not required, but it's a dead giveaway.)

jongjong2• 3 years ago

The plug held firmly. I believe it was the port on the device as changing the cable didn't resolve the issue.

anymouse123456• 3 years ago

And from such heroic beginnings, they've become a despicable cartel that shakes down small businesses for thousands of dollars by selling artificially scarce numerals.

mannyv• 3 years ago

This is why technical people should not use financial metrics in their decisions. At some point costs drop to near zero.

The guy has been responsible for unbelievable amounts of human aggravation.

ShadowBanThis013• 3 years ago

Reversibility should not have been the question here. The question is why the connector is RECTANGULAR instead of trapezoidal.

What a stupid thing to ignore.

Nomentatus• 3 years ago

The plug didn't have to be reversible - it could just have had a trapezoidal cross-section. No significant cost.

dehrmann• 3 years ago

in theory, would give users a 50/50 chance of plugging it in correctly

That turned out to be an over-estimate.

oleg_antonyan• 3 years ago

one of the greatest inventions of all time

Seriosly? Overcomplicated protocol to make it very hard to bit-bang and thus pay USB-IF for every chip, every logo. There was already 100mbit Ethernet at that time, just add power wires and use existing network stack in software, but how can you squish money from it?! Ofc they needed something new proprietary, overcomplicated, with terrible reliability. USB is the curse of modern hardware.

nelox• 3 years ago

Imagine if “Ethernet” cables weren’t reversible.

jasonkester• 3 years ago

As an added bit of genius, it’s exactly the right width to fit snugly into an Ethernet port. (Which most laptops keep right next to the usb ports)

So on the rare occasion that you get it right by feel the first try, you’re not actually plugged in to anything and get to spend 10 minutes debugging your printer before noticing.

perilunar5• 3 years ago

My take: round connectors are the best connectors — checking the plug orientation is a waste of bloody time. Every time you plug something in you waste a few seconds checking the orientation and flipping the plug over. Even reversible plugs are inferior to round ones.

USB-A has only 4 wires: they could have easily used a co-axial connector. Hell, they could have used a 3.5 mm TRRS phono cable and it would have been better.

Why do we put up with this shit?

titzer• 3 years ago

I used to struggle with USB-A plugs until I made it a point to actually look and pay attention. 99% of all plugs are labeled and logo side faces up. For devices that have a natural orientation (e.g. laptop), it always goes one way. For mating two cables, just look at where the male PCB in one is.

Turns out that plugging in USB-A cables is a skill you can learn in 5 seconds.

INTPenis• 3 years ago

Where all my autistic nerds at who look at the connector before they stick it in, and remember which way all their connectors are facing? hands up

qwerty456127• 3 years ago

Making USB reversible to begin with would have necessitated twice as many wires and twice as many circuits, and would have doubled the cost

Not really. I've got a cable which is USB 2.0 type A one side, Micro-B the other side and both the sides are perfectly reversible. It's already been many years since I've bought it and it still serves me reliably for both charging and data needs. The manufacturer didn't even have to change the standard to produce a reversible cable working great with all the old devices whose manufacturers never heard reversible USB cables exist.

SergeAx• 3 years ago

There is a knowledge that you have to hold your USB cable with the logo upwards. Unfortunately, it is too arcane, so lots of cable and even device manufacturers just not aware of it. Also I it becomes quirky when the socket is vertically oriented.

jalapenos• 3 years ago

I don't know how, but the USB somehow managed to be worse than non-reversible.

The number of times I've flipped it around more than once to get it right is absurd.

It must look hilarious if you zoomed out to population scale. Thousands of people flipping around USBs at any given second.

korginator• 3 years ago

Rubbish. These are just excuses for terrible & thoughtless design.

USB is by far the worst designed thing in the history of humankind, in terms of the cumulative amount of frustration it has caused globally.

All common-sense usability principles were ignored, and these are not new principles. Take the old RS-232C or RJ45 jacks, you just looked at it and you knew which way to plug it in. Hell you could do it blindfolded by feel.

FullyFunctional• 3 years ago

That's of course nonsense as others have pointed out, but I still decry the insane electrical implementation: bidirectional differential[1] pairs. Having instead (like Firewire) a dedicated pair in each direction is so much simpler and leads to much better performance. Instead we got evermore convoluted and complicated USB which has long surpassed Firewire in cost of cables etc.

[1] of course USB isn't always truly differential which is part of the problem.

pastalex• 3 years ago

via Joel Johnson's oral history (https://www.fastcompany.com/3060705/an-oral-history-of-the-u... )

'Okay, but: why wasn’t the plug reversible?

Ajay Bhatt: Good question. We had looked at it, but the whole goal here was to make it very inexpensive, and at that point, we were trying to solve all the USB problems with two wires. At that point, if you added wires to make things flippable, you have to add wires, and you also have to add a lot of silicon. Wires and pins cost real money, so we decided to keep it as cheap as possible. With serial port and parallel port, there were versions that were 25 pins and 36 pins and so on and so forth. The cables were very thick and expensive. We were trying to solve all the problems. We went in favor of fewer wires. In hindsight, a flippable connector would have been better.

Our goal was to say that this interface should be such that it should work on a mouse and it should also work on a high-end printer or on digital cameras. That’s what we were looking at, the range of products. At one end, we wanted it simple enough, so there could be very low costs. At the other end, we wanted to make sure that it could be scaled and, just as we speak today, we’re running the USB at tens of gigs. The original one was running at 12 megs. We’ve come a long way in scaling.'

USB inventor explains why the connector was not designed to be reversible (2019)

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