If laptops can charge via USB, international travel will be so much nicer.
USB has already made international travel much better (thanks to 90% of your key electronics being USB, and international USB adapters being cheap and reliable, or heck just buy a local one in each country, they're $5/each).
Most laptops have a "brick" which works in most countries, but you still need to find the correct local cable or have an adapter (and frankly some adapters are unsafe/bad). In a future where everything is USB (type-C) which might be 10+ years off, everyone will benefit.
> USB has already made international travel much better (thanks to 90% of your key electronics being USB, and international USB adapters being cheap and reliable, or heck just buy a local one in each country, they're $5/each).
I often travel with just one power adapter, for my laptop, and then I charge my cell phone from my laptop via USB, rather than bringing a separate charger and thus needing a second power adapter.
> If laptops can charge via USB, international travel will be so much nicer.
I got the HP Chromebook 11 for just that reason. It charges with a micro-usb port, i.e. the same cable as android phones. It's nice to not need to bother packing a charger or cable for it.
It's too bad all ultrabooks don't add a micro-usb port just for this purpose (in addition to the normal charger). The current chargers are much thicker than the computer which is annoying, and it'd be nice if you could just leave a charger in your car and suitcase and figure that you'd be covered.
The original iMac had more ports than the current Air (audio in/out, power, ethernet, modem, USBx2, and an expansion slot).
One port that can do power, data, or video is pretty spiffy. Using that as an excuse to only have one port on the entire machine seems a bit extreme. At least give us one on each side..
Steve Jobs is smiling from wherever. The more things removed the better for him. Personally I never have owned a laptop and still love my mouse, keyboard and three monitors.
It is nice for charging overnight, but not so much for usage. Even a beefy iPad adapter (~2.1 amps) doesn't provide enough power during usage. If you want to run it without drawing down the battery, you need the included charger (3 amps), which had a tendency to overheat and melt in its first iteration.
I'd like to see an interim conversion adopted for charging from USB3.1 to things like Magsafe on the MacBooks. In the dark days of laptops, stepping on the power cable could end your laptop, USB 3.1 looks like it'd be a return to that if used as a primary charging source.
Other than that, USB3.1 looks fantastic. Thunderbolt 1.0 speeds, big power, and much better connector.
The patent could probably be challenged. Magnetic power connectors existed prior to MagSafe (e.g. you don't want hot oil from your deep fryer to spill on you if you trip over the cord), so the patents seem more like those "X but on a computer"-type patents.
Oh I agree, the patents are ridiculous, but I think if any of the big manufacturers were willing to make a go of it, they'd have done it by now.
That said, I think the specific innovation they rest their patent on is that it can be inverted. Under current patent doctrine that might be enough, and I suspect people wouldn't be very happy with a non-invertable magsafe-like.
I fully agree with you that the MagSafe utility patent is a paper tiger, but unfortunately in this case Apple still hold a design patent on the general MagSafe connector shape[0]. So anyone is free to make their own magnetic power connectors, it just can't have five pins in a line that matches the exact sizes that Apple has chosen.
plugging into power is safe, as no data access is possible. some high-sec site solder USB ports shut. already a headache with smartphones and tablets that use the single-port concept (USB, Lightning).
that free USB charging station in beijing airport might not be so free after all...
Welp, time to buy 15 new USB cables again! At least it's worth it this time, vs mini -> micro, which has been a lot less durable in my experience (the shape of the mini B connector + height made it a lot less likely to bend at the flexible plastic part you grab)
From mini to micro they moved the stress and failure points from the port to the connector. I'd rather replace a cable than a port, so imo it was a significant improvement.
Well, anecdata and all but I've had rather the opposite experience. Mini ports that even new plugs just don't want to stay in and micro plugs where a new cable was all I needed.
Someone in this post has been talking about micro plugs outright breaking off in devices and I've never seen that at all.
I've had micro usb cables die, cables incompatible with devices, and even had a phones micro-usb die. Seems like I get about a year out of micro-usb cable/device/charger if I use it daily. Assuming no physical abuse I've never had a problem with mini-usb.
Wireless charging is pretty lame in that it only works <1cm from the base, something my toothbrush has done for the past decade. It's useful for devices where a port is undesirable (e.g. Smart watches) but IMO otherwise pretty useless. If they had e.g. Desks which charged your laptop + phone when set on the desk, that might be the slightest bit more convenient than plugging it in, but it seems like a lot of tech for a little convenience.
I remember having a Nokia 6600 back in 2003, with a Sony Ericsson bluetooth headset, and getting a lot of questions about it. The phone had 3G and a video camera, web browser, smartphone OS (at the time; Symbian S60) with apps, and the Bluetooth headset I had (HBH-660) had called ID and a button to hang up, was very light, and lasted quite a while on a battery (IIRC, it would connect to Bluetooth on demand, since low-power 4.x wasn't a thing then). It's kind of disappointing to me how this stuff hasn't advanced terribly in functionality in the 10 years since. It's still wearables which work ~poorly, Bluetooth inter-op issues (cars are pretty notorious), battery life struggles, etc.
I've had a Lumia 928 for about 19 months now and I have to disagree. I haven't plugged the phone in - to anything - since I bought it. I find just thunking the phone down onto the Qi charger much more convenient than fiddling with cables. Some day we'll look back on wires in general and laugh at how primitive we were.
Likewise, I have a Lumia 920 and I use a Qi enabled cradle in my car. It makes charging my phone in my car much more convenient. Combined with Bluetooth I don't have to deal with any wires into my phone going into and out of my car (which I do at least a dozen times a day).
What I'm excited about here is monitor hubs. You plug your monitor into a power socket, and peripherals into the monitor's USB ports.
You arrive at work, and only need to plug your laptop into the monitor. The monitor hub sends power and data from peripherals to your laptop. Your laptop sends video to the monitor all through the same cable.
Yeah, that's basically what Apple offers today on their thunderbolt monitors (except those still need a separate power cable). Hopefully we'll actually see a wider adoption of the concept once it's on commodity USB-C instead of the massively expensive thunderbolt.
The idea is that you can daisy-chain many devices without using a hub. Among thunderbolt devices, I believe most screens and high-end hard drives provide the two ports necessary for daisy-chaining. USB also supports this quite well, and high-end USB hard drives also generally include a port for this purpose.
It's an interesting comeback for the concept - it reminds me of daisy chaining PCs on their serial ports for playing Starcraft:
I know you can daisy chain, my point being that you get only a few ports, per $200+ device. Vs USB 3 where added usb ports, ethernet, etc is $20 a device.
As others have pointed out, there's a lot to be exited about. I definitely see this as a big step forward.
That said, I think the connector shape is flawed. I've seen too many micro USB connectors break off in phones because it's hard to make something that small strong enough for movement from the cable. I wish they would have chosen something closer to the lightning connector or magnetic for durability. I'd hate to have to replace the main point of connectivity of an ultra-thin laptop.
I'm sure, and there's probably a ton of other considerations that went into this design e.g. space savings in laptops, manufacturing costs, etc. I just really like not worrying about connectors breaking after replacing laptops and cellphones early because of broken power/micro-USB jacks.
That was their purpose. It was either that or put the teeth in the female port, on your expensive device and impossible to replace when (not if) they broke down. Put them on the cheap and easily replacable cable was a wise design decision.
That seems to me like a lot of power to be sending through a 0.5mm wide contact pin separated from the data pin by another 0.5mm. I see elsewhere that they have upped the voltage to 20V, which reduces the current required - is that all it takes?
From the spec:
"3.7.7.4 Contact Current Rating (EIA 364-70, Method 2)
A current of 5.0 A shall be applied collectively to VBUS pins (i.e., pins A4, A9, B4, and B9) and 1.25 A applied to the VCONN pin (i.e., B5 of the plug connector) with the return path through the corresponding GND pins (i.e., pins A1, A12, B1, and B12). A minimum current of 0.25 A shall also be applied individually to all the other contacts. When the currents are applied to the contacts, the temperature rise shall not exceed 30 °C at any point on the USB Type-C mated plug and receptacle under test, when measured at an ambient temperature of 25 °C."
63 comments
[ 2.6 ms ] story [ 149 ms ] threadUSB has already made international travel much better (thanks to 90% of your key electronics being USB, and international USB adapters being cheap and reliable, or heck just buy a local one in each country, they're $5/each).
Most laptops have a "brick" which works in most countries, but you still need to find the correct local cable or have an adapter (and frankly some adapters are unsafe/bad). In a future where everything is USB (type-C) which might be 10+ years off, everyone will benefit.
I often travel with just one power adapter, for my laptop, and then I charge my cell phone from my laptop via USB, rather than bringing a separate charger and thus needing a second power adapter.
http://www.righto.com/2012/03/inside-cheap-phone-charger-and...
I got the HP Chromebook 11 for just that reason. It charges with a micro-usb port, i.e. the same cable as android phones. It's nice to not need to bother packing a charger or cable for it.
It's too bad all ultrabooks don't add a micro-usb port just for this purpose (in addition to the normal charger). The current chargers are much thicker than the computer which is annoying, and it'd be nice if you could just leave a charger in your car and suitcase and figure that you'd be covered.
No maglock power supply, no display port, just the one port.
And even if you run out of juice, you can probably recharge it within 30-60 minutes. So it would only mean this long without a usb drive.
Finally, who knows - perhaps Apple will turn the power brick into a usb hub.
One port that can do power, data, or video is pretty spiffy. Using that as an excuse to only have one port on the entire machine seems a bit extreme. At least give us one on each side..
Other than that, USB3.1 looks fantastic. Thunderbolt 1.0 speeds, big power, and much better connector.
Unfortunately, the owner of patents on magsafe is unlikely to allow that to happen.
That said, I think the specific innovation they rest their patent on is that it can be inverted. Under current patent doctrine that might be enough, and I suspect people wouldn't be very happy with a non-invertable magsafe-like.
[0] http://www.patentlyapple.com/patently-apple/2012/12/apple-wi...
http://9to5mac.com/2015/01/06/macbook-air-12-inch-redesign/
plugging into power is safe, as no data access is possible. some high-sec site solder USB ports shut. already a headache with smartphones and tablets that use the single-port concept (USB, Lightning).
that free USB charging station in beijing airport might not be so free after all...
Welp, time to buy 15 new USB cables again! At least it's worth it this time, vs mini -> micro, which has been a lot less durable in my experience (the shape of the mini B connector + height made it a lot less likely to bend at the flexible plastic part you grab)
Someone in this post has been talking about micro plugs outright breaking off in devices and I've never seen that at all.
I suspect Wigig will be as popular as WiDi, another Intel wireless technology: http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/WiDi Keep in mind how long it took Bluetooth to really take off and work reasonably well between devices (4.0 IMO): http://www.bluetooth.com/Pages/History-of-Bluetooth.aspx (Bluetooth is 15 years old).
I remember having a Nokia 6600 back in 2003, with a Sony Ericsson bluetooth headset, and getting a lot of questions about it. The phone had 3G and a video camera, web browser, smartphone OS (at the time; Symbian S60) with apps, and the Bluetooth headset I had (HBH-660) had called ID and a button to hang up, was very light, and lasted quite a while on a battery (IIRC, it would connect to Bluetooth on demand, since low-power 4.x wasn't a thing then). It's kind of disappointing to me how this stuff hasn't advanced terribly in functionality in the 10 years since. It's still wearables which work ~poorly, Bluetooth inter-op issues (cars are pretty notorious), battery life struggles, etc.
I've had a Lumia 928 for about 19 months now and I have to disagree. I haven't plugged the phone in - to anything - since I bought it. I find just thunking the phone down onto the Qi charger much more convenient than fiddling with cables. Some day we'll look back on wires in general and laugh at how primitive we were.
Wireless charging is a complex and inefficient gimmick for most devices, in my opinion.
You arrive at work, and only need to plug your laptop into the monitor. The monitor hub sends power and data from peripherals to your laptop. Your laptop sends video to the monitor all through the same cable.
It's an interesting comeback for the concept - it reminds me of daisy chaining PCs on their serial ports for playing Starcraft:
http://www.angelfire.com/nt/startupage/sc/FRAMES/SERIAL/3OR4...
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8848712
7.5W (1.5A@5V) according to the Battery Charging Specification 1.2. 10W chargers are out-of-spec extensions, as were 5W chargers before 2010.
That said, I think the connector shape is flawed. I've seen too many micro USB connectors break off in phones because it's hard to make something that small strong enough for movement from the cable. I wish they would have chosen something closer to the lightning connector or magnetic for durability. I'd hate to have to replace the main point of connectivity of an ultra-thin laptop.
http://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/18552/why-was...
Having no info on the mechanical properties of the Type C connector, I'm curious (and a bit skeptical) about how that'll live on.
USB Type-C Spec v1.0 Section 3.2.1 / Page 32 http://www.usb.org/developers/docs/
That seems to me like a lot of power to be sending through a 0.5mm wide contact pin separated from the data pin by another 0.5mm. I see elsewhere that they have upped the voltage to 20V, which reduces the current required - is that all it takes?
From the spec: "3.7.7.4 Contact Current Rating (EIA 364-70, Method 2) A current of 5.0 A shall be applied collectively to VBUS pins (i.e., pins A4, A9, B4, and B9) and 1.25 A applied to the VCONN pin (i.e., B5 of the plug connector) with the return path through the corresponding GND pins (i.e., pins A1, A12, B1, and B12). A minimum current of 0.25 A shall also be applied individually to all the other contacts. When the currents are applied to the contacts, the temperature rise shall not exceed 30 °C at any point on the USB Type-C mated plug and receptacle under test, when measured at an ambient temperature of 25 °C."
http://www.usb.org/developers/docs/