So, call it USB-D or something, if one cable is significantly different (in purpose, performance, form factor) than another cable. Don't just call everything the same label, and let the non-technical buyer beware.
Ehem, we already do that. USB-C is an umbrella term and everyone has a homebaked organizing system to tell which USB-C cable can do what, or a homebaked testing routine where we run through 5 cables each time we need to connect something.
That's what the article is about. Calling all these cables USB-C and making them look indistinguishable is a very leaky abstraction.
So there are 4 different current-carrying levels, from 2.5A to 5A EPR.
There are 6 different transfer speeds, from 480mbps to 120gbps.
There’s DisplayPort yes/no.
There are 4 thunderbolt genrations, each with its own marker.
Some of those are dependent (480mbps cables don’t have markers), so it’s not a full permutation problem. Only about 20 different combinations are valid.
Is the proposal to have 20 different physical connectors? Or to prune the space down to 6 or so by requiring all cables to be very thick, or to support higher transfer speeds than make any sense for a charging cable?
It’s not a leaky abstraction. It’s a physical interface standard that does not guarantee electrical properties. Same way you can plug a 6A cord and a 20A cord into the same electrical outlet.
- "USB Speed 3" means 100gbps, thunderbolt 4, etc.
- "Power 100" means 100 watts minimum.
Make a little logo for each standard - "S2" / "S3" / "P100" which can be branded onto each end of the cable. People who care can look at the logos and tell what a given cable can do.
I mean, if you care about this and it annoys you the fix is very simple and relatively cheap.
Just set a minimum baseline/standardization for the type of cable/capabilities you need for your highest end device. Only keep those cables, give away the rest, and buy a half dozen new cables so no matter which you select you will always get the right one.
I've rarely found I need a "special" USB-C cable outside of connecting Thunderbolt ports. Those are mostly static on my monitors, with one in my laptop bag. They also happen to be decently labeled on the connector with what they are.
Once in a while I get an incredibly cheap horrible one from some throw away style device and I simply toss the cable immediately.
The only exception I can think of are USB-A -> USB-C adapter cables where the device is so cheap it doesn't implement USB-C PD delivery at all and expects a "dumb" 5V connection. That is a charger issue though, not a cabling one. Those devices are luckily starting to become much more rare.
I purged the house of the worst 5W USB-A charges long ago in a fit of rage. Anything that couldn't do 15W was tossed. We still have more 15W chargers than I could ever use in a lifetime.
> Just set a minimum baseline/standardization for the type of cable/capabilities you need for your highest end device. Only keep those cables, give away the rest
I don't have a cable tester, and I don't want to buy one. The companies who make USB cables should be responsible for this testing. I don't want to do expensive homework on behalf of USB cable companies.
Buy nice cables from a trusted brand and bin anything else. You're going to be overpaying though because there's not a lot of reason to be powering your laptop with a 480 Gbps TB 4 USB-C cable.
That’s not all you need to do though; once you have bought all Cable Matters or Anker cables, you still need to remember which one charges your iPhone quickly, and which one is thunderbolt-capable but missing the lightning bolt, which one is charging-only, etc. I have a whole mess of cables - and several of these dongles (you need a usb-a capable one, and only that other one reads thunderbolt markers, etc). I spend the time to label any cable that I buy myself, and wish the vendors would do it instead.
From reading TT, it seems there’s just no easy solution to complexity if we want interoperability.
I've done this and the answer is they all charge my phone quickly and I know the handful that are the highspeed cables either by the markings or knowing which of them are the good cables.
Some chargers will re-negotiate depending how many cables are plugged into the adapter. Which is fine, but sometimes makes it tricky to know if it's the cable, the plug, or the number of cables causing a slow charge
I think Apple much rather tells users that this is exactly what they warned them about when they were forced to support USB-C and will advise users to only buy official cables from Apple.
No, they mean USB-C, the port they switched all but a handful of their devices to before any other manufacturer.
While GP’s take is ridiculous (if common), I do think the notion that Apple led the charge on USB-C is mostly a myth, outside of them being active participants on the USB Implementor’s Forum.
Eh, I can’t find it now so a thousand grains of salt, but I read a good article back in the day about how much Apple’s experience with in-market Lightning shaped USB-C’s physical connector and electrical handshake.
> Or do we now need to resort to labeling cables and checking the label?
YES oh please yes! Give me labels! I'm sick of playing guessing games with my USB cables. Which one should I use for my external drive? This cable is thick! Will it work? Maybe it's only thick so it can send power? It seems impossible to tell, even if I plug it in to my computer. The files are there, I just need to somehow guess that it's a bit slower than it's supposed to go. Another cable feels expensive but its 1m. Will it work? Do I get slower data rates? I can't tell. I hate guessing. Label the cables!
USB-A has many variants and we don’t call it a different connector. Heck, USB-B and micro USB both have 3.0 variants that are physically different and we don’t call them something different either. I don’t see the problem here. This is just semantics, especially when they aren’t even labeled period… people just see a cable and will try plugging it in.
The other USBs are no better TBH. I still remember USB Full Speed and USB High Speed. Do you remember, without looking it up, which one is faster? Same form factor, same physical connector.
USB2 has been backwards compatible from the beginning though. I can’t think of a time in the past… 15, maybe 20 years where a USB cable wasn’t capable of high speed, unless it didn’t have data lines at all.
(And yes, I don’t need to look it up. But also I’m extremely familiar with the USB spec and have been tangentially involved with the USB-IF)
> USB-A has many variants
> especially when they aren’t even labeled period
What are you talking about? USB-A is color coded. You'll frequently see white and blue. Admittedly this is harder with USB-C because the size, but I don't see why we can't label these things. Not labeling just leads to confusion and fraud.
The color coding is optional and ambiguous: Blue is recommended, not required, and there is no difference for 3.0, 3.1 (10gbit) or others. And you now also have red, yellow, green, purple and orange, which have no defined meaning in any standard and are just whatever a manufacturer wants to do. There is nothing preventing someone from selling standard 4 conductor A ports with red coloring.
I've never seen white; in order of prevalence, I've seen black, blue, red, and yellow. But such colour coding is not standardized, every manufacturer is free to choose their own rainbow.
Sometimes. They’re not required to be labeled, though. I would agree that the blue connector for USB3.0 is more common… but again it’s not universal and certainly not every device ever does this.
So a USB-D would imply a different physical connection and end up confusing the consumer even more.
If the cable supports 60w charging or only 25w, if it's full or half bandwidth, those characteristics seem to me like we are talking about grading quality, so a better expansion would be:
TECH PHYSICAL-TYPE GRADE
USB A/B/C 1/2/3
And define which quality the cable should present to achieve higher or lower grade levels, depending on the convention.
There are names for all of the features. It would be cool if there were some sort of color code or physical indication of a cables capability, but one of the cool things about usb-c is that the same connector works for really cheap stuff and really high end stuff. For example, in a pinch I can charge my MacBook (slowly) from a $5 gas station usb charger.
USB-C is the connector type, not the cable. The connector type supports multiple protocols, including for interoperability with other connector types as a cable can have USB-C in one end and something else in the other end and users expect the cable connection to just work the USB way.
