> Some, like Apple, say they do this for ecological reasons. But more cost-conscious manufacturers do so to save money,
I had wondered if the author might be drinking a little too much apple juice, this was the line that confirmed it. No, they all do it for cost reasons, only one happens to spin marketing around it which you take at face value (if it were even remotely true, you wouldn't see the markup or immense waste that comes with the separate cables).
The problem may be that you've invested too much into an ecosystem that actively works against standards and needs to be dragged, metaphorically kicking and screaming, into it.
Outside said ecosystem, the promise of a universal cable is almost a reality, at least much closer than the one you're illustrating.
Not sure what functionality is not covered by current cables. Both my laptop and phone, which are several years old, use the usb-C connector for power, data, video, audio, and combined with a hub can connect to any usb peripheral out there.
Sure, the weird triple-split usb-c connector that came with my son's cheap walkie-talkies from Amazon doesn't do all that. But I don't expect it to, and it will at least charge my phone if I plug it, and that's the primary usage I want for this cable.
Try buying an USB-C cable in a random brick and mortar store, or on Amazon. Between "fully thunderbolt 4 certified" cables that do everything, reliable, and "you get two wires for basic 5W charging" cables that reliably disappoint, there's a wild world of maybe sorta compatible cables (don't ask what they're compatible with), and that's before you get into counterfeiting problems (thanks, Amazon).
Edit: Yes, like with all problems in life, "just be better informed than 99% of the population" is a possible, if smug, solution. Just not a good solution for the other 99%.
Honestly I haven’t had much of an issue at all. Just buy trusted brands like Anker, Monoprice, Cables Direct, etc. for slightly more than the cheapest on Amazon. Have yet to receive a counterfeit, checking who is selling and fulfilling the item like you would anything else you buy from any other marketplace style site.
I’m starting to believe the whole counterfeits/commingled inventory zeitgeist on Amazon is another one of those things that was somewhat true at one point, but is more overblown social media bluster like so many other topics are today. Do they happen? Of course. I just doubt it’s as common as trotted out on here.
I buy an exceptionally large amount of stuff like this off Amazon for projects, and must be in the top single digit percentile for consumers of theirs for “cheap Chinese generic junk” and have yet to receive a single item I’ve noticed was not what it said it was. Some useless junk for sure, but those were all my fault and returned without issue.
We are talking hundreds of USB-C cables now, ranging from charging only to full on thunderbolt driving multiple daisy chained 4k monitors.
> Just buy trusted brands like Anker, Monoprice, Cables Direct, etc. for slightly more than the cheapest on Amazon.
That category includes cables that can
- do one of the many quick charging standards (or multiple), but data only at 2.0 rates
- data at 3.x rates (any variants) but no power delivery
- power delivery, but only at limited wattages, and data at 3.0 speeds, to slow for alternate modes
If you know what you're doing, you can dodge all these landmines, but 99% of consumers do not and never will, and to them USB-C is that weird connector where they never know what'll work today. (Whoever decided that USB2 passthrough only works in one orientation was a real sadist, too.)
> and to them USB-C is that weird connector where they never know what'll work today.
No? What world do you live in?
Both of my parents have used USB-C for years, and they're more careful with their charging blocks than they are with their cables. All they care about is plugging in their devices to charge and USB-C cables do that fine. Both Lightning and USB are replete with non-conformant counterfeit cables, it's a moot point since people throw away anything that is nonfunctional. 99% of consumers don't need Thunderbolt capabilities, so they don't actually care if it's there. That's why your mom and dad don't charge their phones with fully-specced cables either.
Considering that Lighting cables tend to max out their wattage at the USB-C minimum, I think these are some seriously bottom-barrel arguments. Even child-friendly manufacturers like Nintendo consider USB-C perfectly suitable to trust with children, because it's actually not that hard to deal with if you're just trying to charge a tablet. And so does Apple, if you don't consider the Mac a fully estranged business.
Nintendo is the perfect counter example for the supposed "universality" of USB-C:
- The Switch insists on an obscure non-mandatory voltage that many early USB-PD power supplies did not support (and good luck teaching the difference between USB-PD and USB-QC), and even today a good chunk won't
- The Switch is the only commonly used device to not use DP Alternate Mode for its docking station, so it needs special Switch docks that support it (but an iPad will run with a Dell laptop dock!)
Apple at least managed to unify their devices on USB-PD for charging, but if you're using any other phone vendor, you run into the added problem that PD is a premium future and you're only getting QC for fast charging.
I can find a set of USB cables and a charger on Amazon that can charge any combination of laptop, phone and Switch at the same time with full speed. But 99% of regular, non-IT people I meey consider this witchcraft - anything other than "I use my laptop charger and the laptop cable for my laptop, and the phone charger with the phone cable, and the switch charger has the cable integrated" doesn't work for them and they have better things to do with their lives than figure out why, and I can't blame them.
The Switch is an outlier early USB-C device. The situation sucks, but my wife hasn't had an issue charging hers with pretty much all the USB-PD power bricks in the house today. No special attention was made to buying these, they Just Work. I think we found one which we just tossed as to never have the issue ever again by accident, but that was many years ago.
Again, this seems to be a lot of social media hysteria over effectively a non-issue. I don't know anyone in my life who has a problem charging their phone and laptop off the same USB-C charger. Buy a 60W USB brick of decent quality and chances are it will charge everything you care about at a reasonable speed. These are folks who do not pay attention whatsoever to technology.
USB-C has absolutely improved the situation by a large margin. It's not perfect, but it's slowly getting better every year in my estimation. The early USB-C devices are starting to age out, and most things released recently are pretty good at conforming the basic set of standards you'd expect them to.
If you're doing out-there nerd stuff, I'd expect issues like anything else at the bleeding edge of tech. Such as trying to daisy chain multiple 4k monitors and the sort off one cable. That stuff can be difficult, but very few have such use-cases.
You think this (incorrectly) because you're being either willfully ignorant or just naive. Apple have more insight on their devices and consumers than you could possibly imagine.
Apple know that practically no one connects their iPhone to a computer through the entire lifetime of the phone (less than 1%). So there is no reason they should include a USB3/4 cable when the only thing people do is charge their phone with it. It's added cost, and waste.
Likewise, the ports on their laptops often go unused. They collect anonymized data on how often people plug something in to any port on their device. They know what people are doing, and what is worth spending money on. There is a reason they got rid of their extra I/O to begin with.
USB-C has already been a huge improvement, so the article lands kind of flat.
Maybe they were heavily invested in stuff with lightning ports or something, so they didn't notice 5 years ago when everything else started to consolidate.
Meh, I was more or less forced to buy a USB c only pixel phone, for my headphones to work I had to buy 4 dongles in 6 months so far, one worked but had constant static noise in the background, one straight up didn't work, one died after 3 weeks, I'm now using an apple dongle which works fine excepts it only outputs 50% of the volume on android so in a lot of places it's just not loud enough
And yes I refuse to buy e waste bluetooth headphones that cost 5 times the price of wired ones, kill the battery 5 times faster and have to be trashed every other year because of glued/soldered tiny ass batteries
That’s why I bought myself a portable headphone DAC. I went for the Qudelix 5K. I can turn any headphone into a bluetooth headset, or connect them via USB-C or Lightning with the right cables.
USB C isn't really at fault for the removal of the headphone jack, other than incidentally by making it reasonable for things as small as a phone to host USB devices at all.
Yeah, I find the complaint now kind of odd. I'm now able to use USB C for almost everything except a few older devices that we'll eventually fade out (a baby monitor... that's about it). I'm happy with the situation over all.
I bought a random USB-C cable and power brick at IKEA 1 or 2 years ago and I’ve used it successfully with my Kindle, iPad, MacBook Pro, security camera, electric clipper, PS5 and Switch Pro Controller, as well as Switch itself, and probably a few other devices I’m forgetting.
So yeah, from my point of view, USB-C just works. I have an iPhone 12 so no USB-C yet but I can’t wait to upgrade (maybe next year) to finally have USB-C everywhere.
I don’t care that not all cables support every feature or whatever, I don’t feel like it’s a really common issue in practice.
>Incredibly, its mice will still charge dead-cockroach-style, flipped on their back.
I don't understand this comment in the article. What is incredible about that? I mean, I could turn my notebook or smartphone over and it would still charge the same, what's the big deal?
>This situation is worsened by the fact that many manufacturers now ship devices without a charging brick.
Which ones (so I can avoid them)? I just purchased a Dell notebook earlier this year and it came with a brick.
I have a rechargeable, wireless mouse. It's not fruit-branded.
The thing about my mouse is that when the battery gets low, I can just connect it to my laptop with the charging cable and continue working. It's much more convenient than quitting for the day, and cheaper than buying a second mouse.
I can't use my watch while I charge it. Nor my earbuds. Nor my portable Bluetooth speaker.
None of those can give me any meaningful amount of use time (and definitely not enough for a full work day) from a 2 minute charge.
My mouse can. The port location is not a problem. The constant whining about it from people who largely don't use it is more annoying than any disruption a charge cycle causes.
> If my Logitech G502 mouse couldn't charge while in use, I wouldn't even consider buying it.
Similarly, if a mouse doesn't support touch gestures I wouldn't consider buying it.
I guess we both make compromises: you never have gesture support, I maybe can't use the mouse for two minutes while I go make a coffee if I forget to charge it overnight once a month.
> Specially because previous generation of apple's mice could be charged while in use.
The first version of the Magic Mouse required you to change AA batteries, and its predecessor was a wired USB mouse. Not really sure how you think either of those is charging while you use it?
When my mouse starts blinking I just plug cable and continue whatever I'm doing and it's a solved problem. No second guessing if I can take a break now in the middle of a meeting, no unnecessary cognitive load, no need to remember to charge it when "I have the time", it's... magical.
Personally I don't find it to be a particularly huge "cognitive load" to see a "mouse battery is low, charge soon" notification and then just charge it at the end of the day.
But for those that do, it's great that we have choices.
Yes, but the other point is that, in a practical sense, it is not really a problem. Just a silly design decision.
I expect, if they ever get around to redesigning that mouse, they’ll change the port, if only to avoid derision. The recent port change was not enough to warrant moving the port. That front edge is quite thin so there may not be enough room in the current case.
Thank you for explaining the issue. I guess there are Apple fans (including the author of the article) who can't conceive of a world where there are people who have never used an Apple mouse.
Most people who use an Apple mouse don't really find it to be "an issue". If by chance you ignore the days or weeks of reminders about charging, plugging in for 1-2 minutes will give you charge to last an entire day.
The people who complain about it are almost exclusively people who don't actually use it, but love to complain about it.
When the mouse bricked itself, I was forced to switch to the trackpad. Maybe I could plug the mouse in, if I happened to bring my only cable from home (or maybe from the office) that day. But there was no way of knowing when the mouse was usable again short of interrupting myself to test it. Over time, I decided the mouse wasn't worth the mental overhead and switched full-time to the trackpad, which always works.
Plugging in a laptop is a nuisance, but at least I can do that every time I sit down to start working and it will manage itself all day.
A better use of money, imo, is to just throw out any and all charge-only usb-c cables. Life's too short to be dealing with that crap.
(Speaking as someone that bought a tester but rarely uses it. If the cable doesn't at least work to connect my laptop and whatever peripheral that I have handy at time: trash can.$
I can imagine a day, 10 years from now, when I only carry an IEC power cable,a 2-prong power cable, a Cat 7, 8, or 9 Ethernet cable,a HDMI cable with a couple of adapters, and a few USB-C cables.
If we keep improving USB-C cables like we have Cat cables, and keep them at 28 V, 5 A power delivery, with power meters on at least one connector, I'll be happy.
What devices do you own that you'd have to upgrade in order to live this dream? By intentionally upgrading your devices, you can live that today, not in 10 years.
My "favorite" are these pepper grinders, milk frothers etc that have a usb c plug but only work with usb a to c cables since they do not include the two resistors that are needed to enable 900mA on usb c to c cable. And if anyone says cost reduction, SMT resistors are like 0.1 cent or less... Seems just stupid.
I just noticed this recently with a USB-C flashlight. It wouldn't charge with a C-C cable but started working when I switched to an A-C cable. Good to know why.
Wow...I was just about to throw out a charger that has both USB-A and USB-C ports. The A ports work to charge a device I plugged in, the C ports do not. I thought it was the charger, I'll have to check some more.
The much stupider version of this is devices which will charge the wrong way half the time. Eg if I plug my 16” MacBook Pro into a tiny Nintendo switch lite it will charge the MacBook from the switch half the time which isn’t useful 99% of the time
My cheap IKEA milk frother just broke. I'd been using it for years, with the same AA batteries I put in when I bought it. It doesn't require a lot of power.
If the replacement requires re-charging, especially with a cable that I don't usually have ready to hand, I shall be disappointed.
USB-C is amazing. I can buy USB-C PD spoofers for a couple of bucks that give me a wide range of voltages, at reasonably high amps, for all my electronics projects. It's brilliant.
Outside that application the most annoying issue for me is power only cables - which isn't its fault. Aside from that it's the best we have a by a long way.
I don't see how USB-C is improvement. Its socket has the flimsiest feet that keep it, and it its connectrs break off the board, and are impossible to solder back, unless you're pro fixer with a very good microscope. MicroUSB could be fixed with naked eye and thin iron, and type A sockets just never broke off the board.
I tend to be optimistic here. The situation I believe has visibly improved since 2017-ish era, where you had cables looking exactly the same, but only some of them working, and some others working when plugged a certain way :D
The third-part 60W USB-C charger I bought from Amazon charges my macBook,my Chromebook, my Phone, and my drill!
From a practical perspective, probably just easiest to buy a Thunderbolt cable.
But I think that the USB folks dropped the ball when they made a whole bunch of things "optional" in the spec and still allowed the USB symbol to be used: they should have have gone after anyone selling something not certified but still using their trademark. Perhaps get the US International Trade Commission to do import bans (and equivalents in other countries and the EU).
Their naming convention also does not help ("USB4 Gen 3×2"? WTF?).
62 comments
[ 0.24 ms ] story [ 153 ms ] threadI had wondered if the author might be drinking a little too much apple juice, this was the line that confirmed it. No, they all do it for cost reasons, only one happens to spin marketing around it which you take at face value (if it were even remotely true, you wouldn't see the markup or immense waste that comes with the separate cables).
The problem may be that you've invested too much into an ecosystem that actively works against standards and needs to be dragged, metaphorically kicking and screaming, into it.
Outside said ecosystem, the promise of a universal cable is almost a reality, at least much closer than the one you're illustrating.
Sure, the weird triple-split usb-c connector that came with my son's cheap walkie-talkies from Amazon doesn't do all that. But I don't expect it to, and it will at least charge my phone if I plug it, and that's the primary usage I want for this cable.
Edit: Yes, like with all problems in life, "just be better informed than 99% of the population" is a possible, if smug, solution. Just not a good solution for the other 99%.
Only one USB-C cable I have ever owned was not capable of fast charging, and it was sold by a third party on Amazon.
I’m starting to believe the whole counterfeits/commingled inventory zeitgeist on Amazon is another one of those things that was somewhat true at one point, but is more overblown social media bluster like so many other topics are today. Do they happen? Of course. I just doubt it’s as common as trotted out on here.
I buy an exceptionally large amount of stuff like this off Amazon for projects, and must be in the top single digit percentile for consumers of theirs for “cheap Chinese generic junk” and have yet to receive a single item I’ve noticed was not what it said it was. Some useless junk for sure, but those were all my fault and returned without issue.
We are talking hundreds of USB-C cables now, ranging from charging only to full on thunderbolt driving multiple daisy chained 4k monitors.
That category includes cables that can
- do one of the many quick charging standards (or multiple), but data only at 2.0 rates
- data at 3.x rates (any variants) but no power delivery
- power delivery, but only at limited wattages, and data at 3.0 speeds, to slow for alternate modes
If you know what you're doing, you can dodge all these landmines, but 99% of consumers do not and never will, and to them USB-C is that weird connector where they never know what'll work today. (Whoever decided that USB2 passthrough only works in one orientation was a real sadist, too.)
No? What world do you live in?
Both of my parents have used USB-C for years, and they're more careful with their charging blocks than they are with their cables. All they care about is plugging in their devices to charge and USB-C cables do that fine. Both Lightning and USB are replete with non-conformant counterfeit cables, it's a moot point since people throw away anything that is nonfunctional. 99% of consumers don't need Thunderbolt capabilities, so they don't actually care if it's there. That's why your mom and dad don't charge their phones with fully-specced cables either.
Considering that Lighting cables tend to max out their wattage at the USB-C minimum, I think these are some seriously bottom-barrel arguments. Even child-friendly manufacturers like Nintendo consider USB-C perfectly suitable to trust with children, because it's actually not that hard to deal with if you're just trying to charge a tablet. And so does Apple, if you don't consider the Mac a fully estranged business.
- The Switch insists on an obscure non-mandatory voltage that many early USB-PD power supplies did not support (and good luck teaching the difference between USB-PD and USB-QC), and even today a good chunk won't
- The Switch is the only commonly used device to not use DP Alternate Mode for its docking station, so it needs special Switch docks that support it (but an iPad will run with a Dell laptop dock!)
Apple at least managed to unify their devices on USB-PD for charging, but if you're using any other phone vendor, you run into the added problem that PD is a premium future and you're only getting QC for fast charging.
I can find a set of USB cables and a charger on Amazon that can charge any combination of laptop, phone and Switch at the same time with full speed. But 99% of regular, non-IT people I meey consider this witchcraft - anything other than "I use my laptop charger and the laptop cable for my laptop, and the phone charger with the phone cable, and the switch charger has the cable integrated" doesn't work for them and they have better things to do with their lives than figure out why, and I can't blame them.
Again, this seems to be a lot of social media hysteria over effectively a non-issue. I don't know anyone in my life who has a problem charging their phone and laptop off the same USB-C charger. Buy a 60W USB brick of decent quality and chances are it will charge everything you care about at a reasonable speed. These are folks who do not pay attention whatsoever to technology.
USB-C has absolutely improved the situation by a large margin. It's not perfect, but it's slowly getting better every year in my estimation. The early USB-C devices are starting to age out, and most things released recently are pretty good at conforming the basic set of standards you'd expect them to.
If you're doing out-there nerd stuff, I'd expect issues like anything else at the bleeding edge of tech. Such as trying to daisy chain multiple 4k monitors and the sort off one cable. That stuff can be difficult, but very few have such use-cases.
As a charging standard it's become pretty solid.
You think this (incorrectly) because you're being either willfully ignorant or just naive. Apple have more insight on their devices and consumers than you could possibly imagine.
Apple know that practically no one connects their iPhone to a computer through the entire lifetime of the phone (less than 1%). So there is no reason they should include a USB3/4 cable when the only thing people do is charge their phone with it. It's added cost, and waste.
Likewise, the ports on their laptops often go unused. They collect anonymized data on how often people plug something in to any port on their device. They know what people are doing, and what is worth spending money on. There is a reason they got rid of their extra I/O to begin with.
Maybe they were heavily invested in stuff with lightning ports or something, so they didn't notice 5 years ago when everything else started to consolidate.
And yes I refuse to buy e waste bluetooth headphones that cost 5 times the price of wired ones, kill the battery 5 times faster and have to be trashed every other year because of glued/soldered tiny ass batteries
So yeah, from my point of view, USB-C just works. I have an iPhone 12 so no USB-C yet but I can’t wait to upgrade (maybe next year) to finally have USB-C everywhere.
I don’t care that not all cables support every feature or whatever, I don’t feel like it’s a really common issue in practice.
I don't understand this comment in the article. What is incredible about that? I mean, I could turn my notebook or smartphone over and it would still charge the same, what's the big deal?
>This situation is worsened by the fact that many manufacturers now ship devices without a charging brick.
Which ones (so I can avoid them)? I just purchased a Dell notebook earlier this year and it came with a brick.
The thing about my mouse is that when the battery gets low, I can just connect it to my laptop with the charging cable and continue working. It's much more convenient than quitting for the day, and cheaper than buying a second mouse.
I can’t think of any other recent electronics device that cannot be used while charging.
None of those can give me any meaningful amount of use time (and definitely not enough for a full work day) from a 2 minute charge.
My mouse can. The port location is not a problem. The constant whining about it from people who largely don't use it is more annoying than any disruption a charge cycle causes.
If my Logitech G502 Lightspeed mouse couldn't charge while in use, I wouldn't even consider buying it.
Because when I pay for premium service, I expect premium delivery.
Anything else is fanboyism, handwaving and/or stockholm syndrome.
Specially because previous generation of apple's mice could be charged while in use.
I don't know why you're so upset on defending a downgrade with zero tradeoffs, only to end up with an inferior product.
Similarly, if a mouse doesn't support touch gestures I wouldn't consider buying it.
I guess we both make compromises: you never have gesture support, I maybe can't use the mouse for two minutes while I go make a coffee if I forget to charge it overnight once a month.
> Specially because previous generation of apple's mice could be charged while in use.
The first version of the Magic Mouse required you to change AA batteries, and its predecessor was a wired USB mouse. Not really sure how you think either of those is charging while you use it?
I prefer many physical buttons for reliable macros :)
But when it comes to charging, there's no reason to just happily accept and defend an inferior solution for no tradeoff whatsoever.
It's literally a non issue that gets paraded out by people who don't use it at every opportunity.
When my mouse starts blinking I just plug cable and continue whatever I'm doing and it's a solved problem. No second guessing if I can take a break now in the middle of a meeting, no unnecessary cognitive load, no need to remember to charge it when "I have the time", it's... magical.
It just works.
But for those that do, it's great that we have choices.
I expect, if they ever get around to redesigning that mouse, they’ll change the port, if only to avoid derision. The recent port change was not enough to warrant moving the port. That front edge is quite thin so there may not be enough room in the current case.
why?
if it was a cheap chinese tier 3 mice that would still be debatable
let alone overpriced hardware
The people who complain about it are almost exclusively people who don't actually use it, but love to complain about it.
Plugging in a laptop is a nuisance, but at least I can do that every time I sit down to start working and it will manage itself all day.
Get a cable tester.
Test every cable and cut up/throw away the ones you do not love.
Then order more really good ones than you can justify and keep them handy.
(Speaking as someone that bought a tester but rarely uses it. If the cable doesn't at least work to connect my laptop and whatever peripheral that I have handy at time: trash can.$
I can imagine a day, 10 years from now, when I only carry an IEC power cable,a 2-prong power cable, a Cat 7, 8, or 9 Ethernet cable,a HDMI cable with a couple of adapters, and a few USB-C cables.
If we keep improving USB-C cables like we have Cat cables, and keep them at 28 V, 5 A power delivery, with power meters on at least one connector, I'll be happy.
If you're using a monitor (as opposed to a tv) you can ditch the HDMI cable, and use USB-C DP AltMode.
C7 non-polarized, probably
My cheap IKEA milk frother just broke. I'd been using it for years, with the same AA batteries I put in when I bought it. It doesn't require a lot of power.
If the replacement requires re-charging, especially with a cable that I don't usually have ready to hand, I shall be disappointed.
Outside that application the most annoying issue for me is power only cables - which isn't its fault. Aside from that it's the best we have a by a long way.
The third-part 60W USB-C charger I bought from Amazon charges my macBook,my Chromebook, my Phone, and my drill!
But yes, iPhone is different of course..
But I think that the USB folks dropped the ball when they made a whole bunch of things "optional" in the spec and still allowed the USB symbol to be used: they should have have gone after anyone selling something not certified but still using their trademark. Perhaps get the US International Trade Commission to do import bans (and equivalents in other countries and the EU).
Their naming convention also does not help ("USB4 Gen 3×2"? WTF?).