Comment by forsatellite
20 hours ago
No need to overthink it. USB cables should just label themselves with their bandwidth - it's not rocket science. Lots of other kinds of cables have a similar requirement. And I guess their maximum watts too. Admittedly I'm not sure why so few USB cables do this.
I'd very much rather not have a new connector shape every time the technology improves and devices and cables gain new capabilities. The benefit of where USB-C is at, is the new stuff is backwards compatible with previous generations. The complaints in the early years - about one connector, unpredictable capabilities - were wrong. It took time for this benefit to accrue.
Also all the version numbers and brand names have been confusing, but the bandwidth is just a single number that goes up each generation and covers most of the issues now. There are just a few edge cases this doesn't cover these days.
Most USB C cables do have a label, but it's an electronic one. Desktop and mobile OSes could do a better job of surfacing this information for the user.
Or they could simply be labelled.
In this way, I would be able to see (using the advanced, integrated bionic vision system that I've carried with me and used every day I've been alive) what it is that I have before me instead of plugging them in one at a time to some electronic oracle to try to discern the details of the invisible magic inside.
The most infuriating part is that the USB-IF actually designed those labels already!
The graphics already exist[0], and they are quite clear about what the cable is able to do. Manufacturers just... can't be bothered?
[0]: https://www.usb.org/sites/default/files/usb_type-c_cable_log...
Oof now I've actually looked at this link and... they did manage to make it confusing: There's an official label for 5, 20, 40, and 80Gbps... but the official label for 480Mbps is, "just don't show any value." And that's the most common USB-C cable you'll find new, even today.
>No need to overthink it. USB cables should just label themselves with their bandwidth - it's not rocket science.
And yet, this requirement already misses the other thing it should state: it's power rating. Because even two cables with the same bandwidth can have widely different power rating, and thus powering capacity or charging speed for different devices.
I have no respect for a man who can't label a cable with more than one figure.
Don't take this comment too seriously, just a curiosity.
Powering capacity sometimes matters, but are there any devices out there where the charging speed would be meaningfully different? As in, they use significantly more than 60 watts to charge? (I looked up some of those super fast charging phones and they don't seem to be following the USB standards in the first place.)
> but are there any devices out there where the charging speed would be meaningfully different? As in, they use significantly more than 60 watts to charge?
Any device which can charge at 100W or more? Like lots of laptops, as well as my ebile batteries?
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