Comment by Filligree
1 day ago
Mostly, that's non-compliant devices. Doesn't make it work any better, but I wouldn't assume Apple is doing it wrong here.
USB-C ports aren't allowed to provide power until after configuration, but a lot of USB-C chargers provide 5V regardless. This is wrong, but it does mean you can use a dumb C-to-micro cable which doesn't include the necessary electronics. (A pull-down resistor at least.)
And of course there's no way to tell by the looks of the cable.
Yeah this is right. I bought a cheap wireless mouse, with a USB-C port for charging. None of the USB-C chargers in my house would charge it, so after awhile it inevitably went flat and I took it back to the shop - since it was faulty.
The guy in the shop plugged it in to a USB-A port via a cheap A-to-C cable, and the mouse immediately came to life. Of course. I felt like an idiot.
I didn't get a faulty unit. Whoever designed the mouse was treating the USB-C plug like a newer micro-usb port. The mouse just expected 5V over the port. They clearly didn't bother testing it with a proper USB-C charger.
I returned it anyway and got a mouse that wasn't broken.
Something I've also see some shitty peripherals do is only hook up one side of the USB-C connectors. To get it charging, you'd need to orient the cable right.
Absolutely baffling, but it only happened to me for brands where I should've figured.
It annoys me so much when new electronics do this because the fix is both well known by now and only requires 2 dirt cheap components on the circuit board (5.1k resistors to ground on the CC lines).
As a hardware engineer among other things, that was one of the first things I learned about interfacing with USB C. How do so many consumer devices keep getting this wrong in the year of our lord 2026?
I had a bike light that charged over USB-C. I thought I was going nuts when I couldn’t charge it with any combination of cables and chargers I had. That is until I dug up the cable that came with it, a cheap looking yellow USB-A to USB-C cable. With that cable, I could charge it from anything.
> This is wrong
I understand the technical reasons behind it, but in this case - the actual expectation is to be able to use usb-c to charge other gadgets.
I think we should expect gadgets to not be outright broken in the first place.
That's what I'm trying to say about Apple's charging bricks
4 replies →
Not necessarily, Apple only implemented the latest and greatest USB charging spec in some of their devices (AVS). Their chargers speak the new protocols so their devices and their chargers will work, but a charger from a few years back can easily deliver 100W following the spec (PPS, other PD standards) but be unable to deliver high power charging on some Apple hardware.
Neither side is wrong per se, though it's quite annoying that Apple didn't implement PPS. Then again, if you're buying Apple, you should probably expect these kinds of shenannigans and be ready to need to buy dedicated peripherals.