• Margot Robbie@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    115
    arrow-down
    4
    ·
    1 year ago

    But in practical use, people found out that even a 50/50 chance of plugging the connector in the right way is annoying enough to warrant the additional complexity of reversability, hence the development of USB Type C.

    The USB-C design turned out to be much more durable and versatile (signal and power wise) in addition to reversability compared to the previous USB designs, and it is developed specifically to address the problems people found with USB-A/B/MicroUSB.

    Sometimes problems only reveal themselves through real life usage, and iterative improvement through a scientific trial and error process to address these problem is how you get development progress.

    • MeekerThanBeaker@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      50
      arrow-down
      1
      ·
      1 year ago

      For USB-A, it’s usually not even 50/50. It’s the witchcraft superposition when the first two tries don’t work.

      • OneOrTheOtherDontAskMe@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        7
        ·
        1 year ago

        Yeah, people don’t take into account quantum positioning, pass-through phenomenon, or the fact that I can’t “see” when I plug it in wrong and that makes me think maybe my fingers are dumb and I missed the hole and not that I need to reverse it and try again.

      • Moneo@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        3
        ·
        1 year ago

        First try doesn’t go in: oh I guess I have to flip it. Second try doesn’t go in, fiddle it a bunch still doesn’t go in. Fuck I had it the first time. Third try goes in immediately

    • Echo Dot@feddit.uk
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      35
      ·
      edit-2
      1 year ago

      USB-C has more connectors for data and power than A/B so it’s not a surprise that it’s more capable.

      What’s really changed is demand. No one really expected USB to be used to power everything, it was only ever really expected to be used on computers and maybe digital cameras, smartphones used to arrange matters for themselves. It was only when they two began to adopt USB aas well that calls for smaller ports and higher capacity cables started to arise.

      • Something Burger 🍔@jlai.lu
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        16
        arrow-down
        8
        ·
        1 year ago

        No one really expected USB to be used to power everything

        Yeah, it’s not like the U stands for Universal or something.

        • nymwit@lemm.ee
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          18
          arrow-down
          2
          ·
          1 year ago

          Yeah, Universal Spower Bus. Sounds right. I was reading the “power” part emphasized in the comment you replied to. Prior to mass adoption by phone mfrs, USB wasn’t powering all that much. You’d usually have 5v wall wart and cable ending in a barrel connector. Hate those things.

          • neonred@lemmy.world
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            6
            ·
            1 year ago

            I chuckled more than I would like to admit about that spelled out USB name, dunno, it’s funny

          • pirat@lemmy.world
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            4
            ·
            edit-2
            1 year ago

            The Universal Spower Bus

            sounds like an awesome transit vehicle!

            Let’s take a ride!

            Edit: Spower is a contraction of Space and Power. Yes, you heard me right. It’s running on spinfinite space power!

            And there you have it,

            The Universal Spower Bus:

          • cheery_coffee@lemmy.ca
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            3
            arrow-down
            1
            ·
            1 year ago

            The barrel connector was reversible, and I don’t think I ever had one fail.

            They did always use way too much space with their AC adapter things and for whatever reason nargles liked to steal them.

        • Echo Dot@feddit.uk
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          6
          ·
          1 year ago

          I’m not really sure what that means. The original A/B specification did not allow for much variable voltage. It’s only universal in name, not in nature. There was absolutely no way to deal with high voltage devices, the cables were not adaptive.

          USB 4.0 specification allows for powering things like electrical drills. No way the original USB A/B specification can handle that.

        • averyfalken@lemmy.blahaj.zone
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          3
          ·
          1 year ago

          You are right to an extent but the context of its original universality is in the rest of the name. Universal serial bus. The idea was a universal port for dealing with data and connections not neccesarily power.

      • Socsa@sh.itjust.works
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        4
        ·
        1 year ago

        We are way past it being just a power thing though. USB-C is effectively the standard wired general purpose data bus these days. It’s slowly cannibalizing HDMI and DP as well (via thunderbolt), in addition to power cords.

        • cheery_coffee@lemmy.ca
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          6
          ·
          1 year ago

          Is so dumb that HDMI or DisplayPort over USB-C is called “alt mode”

          The USB Consortium are the only group worse at naming things than Microsoft.

          • averyfalken@lemmy.blahaj.zone
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            1
            ·
            1 year ago

            The worst parr is it used to be good naming scheme. After 3. They went back ended the meaning of 3.0 and 3.1 and made it bad

    • SilverFlame@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      13
      arrow-down
      1
      ·
      1 year ago

      I wish it was 50/50. A lot of the time it wouldn’t plug in so I flipped it. Still didn’t work so I flipped it back to the original orientation and it magically plugs in.

    • 418teapot@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      5
      arrow-down
      2
      ·
      edit-2
      1 year ago

      Can someone explain to me why I keep reading about people having problems plugging in USB A connectors upside down? I feel like I’m taking crazy pills. Per the spec, the holes always go up. They indicate the correct way to plug in the port. Not only that, but the printed logo on the connector also always goes up.

      The only time this is SLIGHTLY confusing is if you have a desktop tower where the motherboard is essentially mounted sideways, but for that case it just takes an extra second to think which way is “up” from the perspective of the motherboard.

      And before anyone says “who reads the spec?”, it feels like I subconsciously knew this for something like a decade before I even knew what a spec was.

      • rasensprenger@feddit.de
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        9
        arrow-down
        1
        ·
        1 year ago

        I’ve seen enough devices with the usb ports mounted upside down, for whatever strange reason. Also sometimes you want to plug something in without looking, this is much easier with USB-C

        • 418teapot@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          2
          ·
          1 year ago

          That’s wild, I’ve never seen an upside down port.

          I agree reversibility is better and am happy usb c will finally kill this meme.

      • StarDreamer@lemmy.blahaj.zone
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        9
        arrow-down
        1
        ·
        edit-2
        1 year ago

        Sometimes you’re working on an IoT device in a tight space, which makes rotating/seeing everything much harder.

        Especially if you drop the cable it falls into a crevice somewhere.

        You probably won’t have trouble plugging it in the first time, but gods forbid you unplug/replug it then the cable rotates 540 degrees and you have no idea how it was plugged in before

        • 418teapot@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          1
          ·
          1 year ago

          Yeah that’s fair. But I feel like I’ve seen these “USB superposition” memes since before IoT was even a thing.