[Arm-netbook] [Campaign Question] USB-C is used more and more...

[Julie Marchant]

On 10/14/2018 09:58 PM, Christopher Havel wrote:
> Quick phone top-post, sorry Luke.
> 
> Zap, I will presume for the moment that you have been living under a large
> roundish lump of granite for the past year-and-a-half-plus (or perhaps in a
> small cave in a particularly remote area) and that Creepy Uncle Google, for
> whatever reason, is not working for you.
> 
> There is a protocol and a connector at work here. USB 3.1 would be the
> protocol, theoretically even faster (and otherwise more capable) than
> USB3.0. USB-C is the associated connector, and the two are inextricably
> linked - AFAIK, one can *only* use the USB3.1 protocol over a rwo-connector
> cable that has at least one end terminated in a USB-C connector.
> 
> USB-C is a rectangular-ish connector - its ends are circular but the area
> in between is flat so it's not an oval shape. Not sure what the technical
> term is - high school geometry was a long time ago indeed. At any rate, the
> connector is a little larger than USB Micro. It contains a ridiculous
> number of pins for its size... 19 IIRC, but that may be me getting confused
> with HDMI and MiniHDMI...
> 
> The other thing about the connector is that it's reversible. You can plug
> it in upside-down and it will match merrily along as if nothing was
> different.
> 
> However, it is also yet another freakin' USB connector to keep track of and
> require adapters for, and as such, it's completely redundant and
> unnecessary. Everyone on earth has already done the USB-A
> triple-plug-to-fit dance enough times to be used to it. I have no use for a
> standard whose only meaningful advantage is one I don't care about and
> whose actual effect is that I need to buy more effing adapters just to make
> my stuff work the way it should OOTB.

My understanding is that USB-C is supposed to phase out all USB-A and
USB-B connectors eventually so that there's only one type of USB plug.
I'm pretty sure it's not required for USB 3.1. You may be confusing USB
3.1 as a whole with certain aspects of it that require USB-C (basically
higher transfer speeds than normal USB 3.1, if I'm understanding correctly).

To be fair, USB-C does bring this Xkcd comic to mind:

https://xkcd.com/927/

But one noteworthy distinction is that the standards body behind USB-C
is intending to replace their own standards, not others' standards
(though it might have the nice side-effect of finally convincing Apple
to switch to USB rather than insisting on its proprietary "Lightning"
nonsense).

I suppose time will tell, though.

-- 
Julie Marchant
http://onpon4.github.io

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