Oh great, they’re making it even more confusing than it already is! Seriously, it’s insane how badly explained all of the different USB modes are. They really need to say, “USB4 now means a type C...
Oh great, they’re making it even more confusing than it already is!
Seriously, it’s insane how badly explained all of the different USB modes are. They really need to say, “USB4 now means a type C connector with 40 gbps and it supports ALL of the features.”
Nobody is going to bother looking up any of this. They’ll see the USB plug on their laptop and their monitor, plug in a cable and be confused as to why it doesn’t work. They won’t give a shit that they brought the wrong cable or whatever. They’ll just be annoyed and have a bad experience.
I disagree. USB4 seems more clear to me, because versioning has gone from USB Type C 3.X Gen X to USB4 Version X and because of the new optional cable logos. What you describe with buying the...
I disagree. USB4 seems more clear to me, because versioning has gone from USB Type C 3.X Gen X to USB4 Version X and because of the new optional cable logos.
What you describe with buying the wrong cable is a problem that already exists and doesn't currently have a good solution, as far as I know. If you want a cable you know is going to work, the best we have at the moment - barring finding and reading the datasheet for each product, if that's even possible - is searching with quotes something like "USBC 3.2 Gen 2" and hoping that the seller has listed it in the same format. When USB4 becomes standard, at least you'll be able to search for USB cables and look for ones with the 40Gbps logo on them, even if there are ones without that have the same problem we currently have.
Companies are going to want to continue to be able to sell budget cables, so if you don't include options for that they'll just keep selling USB Type C 3.? Gen ? cables. If you need options, the best you can really do is provide things like logos to differentiate compliant products, as far as I can tell.
It might not be perfect, but USB4 seems like a good step in the right direction to me.
It’s slightly more clear, but it still won’t make sense to 99% of people. Most consumers aren’t going to look at the logo to differentiate features. They’ll see USB 4 and they’re going to buy the...
It’s slightly more clear, but it still won’t make sense to 99% of people. Most consumers aren’t going to look at the logo to differentiate features. They’ll see USB 4 and they’re going to buy the cheapest cable and be disappointed when they find out that it’s slow or doesn’t support all the features they expect.
It’s just shuffling the deck chairs around. It doesn’t actually solve the problem.
I guess the saving grace is minimum standards for USB4 is 20Gbps, which should be fast enough for most people to not find it too slow. The features might be a bit more of an issue, but I think...
I guess the saving grace is minimum standards for USB4 is 20Gbps, which should be fast enough for most people to not find it too slow. The features might be a bit more of an issue, but I think most of them are supported in at least some way in the min spec (Thunderbolt being officially integrated, for instance).
You mean you don't see the brilliance that is the naming of the USB 3.2 gen 2? /s In all seriousness, the goal of having a single cable and a single connector is great, but I'm not convinced that...
You mean you don't see the brilliance that is the naming of the USB 3USB 3.1 USB 3.2 gen 2? /s
In all seriousness, the goal of having a single cable and a single connector is great, but I'm not convinced that it's really viable. You either explicitly have different cables, or you implicitly do. Hopefully, the only people who run into the implicit cable difference issue are people who know to look out for it, but I don't know if that really works in practice.
For the most part, what I've found is that I can roughly divide the USB C cables I have into thinner cables (slow data and charging) and thicker cables (fast data), where fast data is something...
For the most part, what I've found is that I can roughly divide the USB C cables I have into thinner cables (slow data and charging) and thicker cables (fast data), where fast data is something only needed in limited circumstances. There are technical and practical considerations that divide cables in this way: it is more difficult and expensive to make longer, thinner, and lighter cables with higher data speeds, and it is often desirable to have longer, thinner, and lighter cables for charging. Beyond this distinction, and the problematic confusion with TB3 cables, everything mostly works, most of the time.
And 'mostly working' is a considerable improvement on previous cables: one could argue that what USB C does is make usually possible what would previously have been impossible. I can take a cable I have lying around, and plug my phone into a monitor, and there's a good chance it will display something on the screen. I can plug my laptop into a phone charger and cable, and in my case, it will actually work somewhat, charging the battery slowly. I can be at a relative's house, notice my phone is low on battery, and plug my phone into their laptop charger. I can carry one good cable, and use it for everything. These things don't always work with USB C, but they would have either required specialized cables, or simply been impossible, before USB C.
With that said, I'd argue that the primary frustration I have with USB C is that manufacturers seem not only indifferent, but often actively opposed, to being clear and honest about what they are selling, and no one seems motivated to improve the situation or impose some sort of standards of information. Consider, for example, Anker, often pointed to (problematically, in my opinion) as a reputable company. As far as I can tell, their website will not simply state what their cables are. It will vaguely describe features, but will never list a standard. At times, it will be actively misleading about data. Consider their most expensive cable. It states it has "Wide Compatibility: Designed to work with virtually any USB-C device, from laptops to earbuds" and "ultra-fast file transfer". In fact, it appears to be a USB 2.0 cable: in other words, the slowest data transfer you could reasonably expect from a cable, at a speed that was fast over two decades ago.
There isn't even any reason, in my view, for Anker to present their cables in this way. Their cables are clearly meant as charging cables, with features (lightness, length, flexibility) designed for that use. Yet they won't simply state that they are USB 2 cables, and feel the need to misleadingly claim thay have ultra-fast data speeds. Claims like this by manufacturers make it difficult for consumers to even find USB 3/4 cables, because the market is so flooded with USB 2 cables that either completely omit, or hide in fine print that won't allow them to be filtered out, that they are USB 2 cables.
The USB Implementers Forum does have guidelines with logos/word marks to clarify exactly these things like data transfer and power capabilities. I think this is relatively recent, though. The...
With that said, I'd argue that the primary frustration I have with USB C is that manufacturers seem not only indifferent, but often actively opposed, to being clear and honest about what they are selling, and no one seems motivated to improve the situation or impose some sort of standards of information.
The USB Implementers Forumdoes have guidelines with logos/word marks to clarify exactly these things like data transfer and power capabilities. I think this is relatively recent, though.
The logos don't look very well-designed to me. Why are they using a skeuomorphic cylindrical battery shape (that is >100 years old) to signify power? To match this I'd half expect semaphore flags as a skeuomorphic signifier for the data transfer logo. Also, differentiating cables that can transfer only data vs. power+data seem to only make sense if you look at them together. If you see the data only cable logo, you can only discern that it doesn't carry power due to the implicit omission of the battery symbol in the logo. That is reliant on consumers having an operating understanding that power transfer is optional and that you must look for the specific capability rather than assuming all cables with USB type-C connectors transfer power. Given that most peoples' first experience with USB type-C cables will be the charging cable that comes with a phone or laptop, this is likely to set up infelicitous expectations.
I also haven't seen any of these logos on any real products. Maybe the market will start following the guidelines and we have to wait? By the time OEMs actually get on board with this, though, I imagine the USB spec will have iterated again and it will be continuously confusing until a new connector type standard comes along and resets all this nonsense.
This is the most frustrating thing about the usb if, in my opinion. Every single device manufacturer has been using the usb 3.0/3.1/3.2 branding since usb 3 was released. There is no reason to...
I also haven't seen any of these logos on any real products.
This is the most frustrating thing about the usb if, in my opinion. Every single device manufacturer has been using the usb 3.0/3.1/3.2 branding since usb 3 was released. There is no reason to think that the manufacturers would change now. What’s more, if it were consistent, that branding would be more sensible than their suggested marketing branding. 3.0 for 5gbps, 3.1 for 10gbps, and 3.2 for 20gbps (please note this is false; just an example of what they could do).
Instead, the usb if buries their head in the sand. They rename and change the spec codes knowing that the manufacturers will use them to market their devices. Given how widespread this issue is (I too have never seen the usb if recommended marketing names on many devices. At most it is just a keyword in the keyword soup that is most store listings), it can only be willful ignorance.
Actually willful ignorance is the most favorable interpretation. It is also possible this is intentional maliciousness. Changing the spec names for existing products can be implied obsolescence. For example, a customer gets a new computer that now supports usb 3.2 Gen 2 vs their old computer that was usb 3.1 Gen 2. Now they have to upgrade all their old cables to 3.2 Gen 2 cables to get the best performance out of their computer. However 3.1 Gen 2 is the exact same spec as 3.2 Gen 2. The only difference is If the cable was made before or after an almost unrelated spec, usb 3.2 Gen 2x2.
Likely because, for batteries that people see, that is still the most common and distinctive battery shape. AA and AAA batteries are reasonably common, and even many modern devices use cylindrical...
Why are they using a skeuomorphic cylindrical battery shape (that is >100 years old) to signify power? To match this I'd half expect semaphore flags as a skeuomorphic signifier for the data transfer logo.
Likely because, for batteries that people see, that is still the most common and distinctive battery shape. AA and AAA batteries are reasonably common, and even many modern devices use cylindrical cells (eg, 18650 cells). The pouch batteries of modern devices that need flat batteries are usually not seen, and don't have a distinct shape. Cylindrical cells are really quite common, and tend to all look quite similar. Even 9V batteries, the other shape that might be familiar (because of smoke alarms...) sometimes just have cylindrical cells inside them.
AA and AAA batteries may still be quite common, but the intersection of devices that charge via USB type-C PD and devices that have AA/AAA batteries inside is minuscule. Not to mention, some...
AA and AAA batteries may still be quite common, but the intersection of devices that charge via USB type-C PD and devices that have AA/AAA batteries inside is minuscule. Not to mention, some devices that will draw power over USB don’t even have batteries at all.
The point is that it's a recognizable and unambiguous symbol for the concept of batteries, regardless of the underlying shape or chemistry. It's also why save icons are dominated by a depiction of...
The point is that it's a recognizable and unambiguous symbol for the concept of batteries, regardless of the underlying shape or chemistry. It's also why save icons are dominated by a depiction of a storage format that's been obsolete for 30 years. It communicates what it's meant to clearly, even if it's not technically correct most of the time.
If you’re referring to using disks/diskettes as iconography for “save” dialogs, then yeah, I have the same issue with that. Though, thankfully, in modern software designs, the need to manually...
It's also why save icons are dominated by a depiction of a storage format that's been obsolete for 30 years. It communicates what it's meant to clearly, even if it's not technically correct most of the time.
If you’re referring to using disks/diskettes as iconography for “save” dialogs, then yeah, I have the same issue with that. Though, thankfully, in modern software designs, the need to manually save data by pressing a button/clicking an icon has met the same fate as the antiquated media on which the skeuomorphic icons on which they were based. Just because something is commonplace, or has historically been commonplace, doesn’t mean it’s not still bad design nor anachronistic in the present.
Do you propose an alternative that still communicates its intent clearly or is this something more of a pet peeve? The purpose of design like this is to clearly communicate something, if it...
Do you propose an alternative that still communicates its intent clearly or is this something more of a pet peeve? The purpose of design like this is to clearly communicate something, if it succeeds in that goal unambiguously it seems to me to be a good design in at least that respect.
I’m not a designer and I don’t need to be a designer to find flaws in current designs. I disagree that the current design is clear in its intentions. If the USB IF insists on...
I’m not a designer and I don’t need to be a designer to find flaws in current designs. I disagree that the current design is clear in its intentions. If the USB IF insists on pictograms/iconography, I would think developing something along the lines of the way standard laundry care pictograms work would suffice? At the very least have a battery icon with an X over it for cables that don’t carry power?
Oh great, they’re making it even more confusing than it already is!
Seriously, it’s insane how badly explained all of the different USB modes are. They really need to say, “USB4 now means a type C connector with 40 gbps and it supports ALL of the features.”
Nobody is going to bother looking up any of this. They’ll see the USB plug on their laptop and their monitor, plug in a cable and be confused as to why it doesn’t work. They won’t give a shit that they brought the wrong cable or whatever. They’ll just be annoyed and have a bad experience.
I disagree. USB4 seems more clear to me, because versioning has gone from USB Type C 3.X Gen X to USB4 Version X and because of the new optional cable logos.
What you describe with buying the wrong cable is a problem that already exists and doesn't currently have a good solution, as far as I know. If you want a cable you know is going to work, the best we have at the moment - barring finding and reading the datasheet for each product, if that's even possible - is searching with quotes something like "USBC 3.2 Gen 2" and hoping that the seller has listed it in the same format. When USB4 becomes standard, at least you'll be able to search for USB cables and look for ones with the 40Gbps logo on them, even if there are ones without that have the same problem we currently have.
Companies are going to want to continue to be able to sell budget cables, so if you don't include options for that they'll just keep selling USB Type C 3.? Gen ? cables. If you need options, the best you can really do is provide things like logos to differentiate compliant products, as far as I can tell.
It might not be perfect, but USB4 seems like a good step in the right direction to me.
It’s slightly more clear, but it still won’t make sense to 99% of people. Most consumers aren’t going to look at the logo to differentiate features. They’ll see USB 4 and they’re going to buy the cheapest cable and be disappointed when they find out that it’s slow or doesn’t support all the features they expect.
It’s just shuffling the deck chairs around. It doesn’t actually solve the problem.
I guess the saving grace is minimum standards for USB4 is 20Gbps, which should be fast enough for most people to not find it too slow. The features might be a bit more of an issue, but I think most of them are supported in at least some way in the min spec (Thunderbolt being officially integrated, for instance).
You mean you don't see the brilliance that is the naming of the
USB 3USB 3.1USB 3.2 gen 2? /sIn all seriousness, the goal of having a single cable and a single connector is great, but I'm not convinced that it's really viable. You either explicitly have different cables, or you implicitly do. Hopefully, the only people who run into the implicit cable difference issue are people who know to look out for it, but I don't know if that really works in practice.
For the most part, what I've found is that I can roughly divide the USB C cables I have into thinner cables (slow data and charging) and thicker cables (fast data), where fast data is something only needed in limited circumstances. There are technical and practical considerations that divide cables in this way: it is more difficult and expensive to make longer, thinner, and lighter cables with higher data speeds, and it is often desirable to have longer, thinner, and lighter cables for charging. Beyond this distinction, and the problematic confusion with TB3 cables, everything mostly works, most of the time.
And 'mostly working' is a considerable improvement on previous cables: one could argue that what USB C does is make usually possible what would previously have been impossible. I can take a cable I have lying around, and plug my phone into a monitor, and there's a good chance it will display something on the screen. I can plug my laptop into a phone charger and cable, and in my case, it will actually work somewhat, charging the battery slowly. I can be at a relative's house, notice my phone is low on battery, and plug my phone into their laptop charger. I can carry one good cable, and use it for everything. These things don't always work with USB C, but they would have either required specialized cables, or simply been impossible, before USB C.
With that said, I'd argue that the primary frustration I have with USB C is that manufacturers seem not only indifferent, but often actively opposed, to being clear and honest about what they are selling, and no one seems motivated to improve the situation or impose some sort of standards of information. Consider, for example, Anker, often pointed to (problematically, in my opinion) as a reputable company. As far as I can tell, their website will not simply state what their cables are. It will vaguely describe features, but will never list a standard. At times, it will be actively misleading about data. Consider their most expensive cable. It states it has "Wide Compatibility: Designed to work with virtually any USB-C device, from laptops to earbuds" and "ultra-fast file transfer". In fact, it appears to be a USB 2.0 cable: in other words, the slowest data transfer you could reasonably expect from a cable, at a speed that was fast over two decades ago.
There isn't even any reason, in my view, for Anker to present their cables in this way. Their cables are clearly meant as charging cables, with features (lightness, length, flexibility) designed for that use. Yet they won't simply state that they are USB 2 cables, and feel the need to misleadingly claim thay have ultra-fast data speeds. Claims like this by manufacturers make it difficult for consumers to even find USB 3/4 cables, because the market is so flooded with USB 2 cables that either completely omit, or hide in fine print that won't allow them to be filtered out, that they are USB 2 cables.
The USB Implementers Forum does have guidelines with logos/word marks to clarify exactly these things like data transfer and power capabilities. I think this is relatively recent, though.
The logos don't look very well-designed to me. Why are they using a skeuomorphic cylindrical battery shape (that is >100 years old) to signify power? To match this I'd half expect semaphore flags as a skeuomorphic signifier for the data transfer logo. Also, differentiating cables that can transfer only data vs. power+data seem to only make sense if you look at them together. If you see the data only cable logo, you can only discern that it doesn't carry power due to the implicit omission of the battery symbol in the logo. That is reliant on consumers having an operating understanding that power transfer is optional and that you must look for the specific capability rather than assuming all cables with USB type-C connectors transfer power. Given that most peoples' first experience with USB type-C cables will be the charging cable that comes with a phone or laptop, this is likely to set up infelicitous expectations.
I also haven't seen any of these logos on any real products. Maybe the market will start following the guidelines and we have to wait? By the time OEMs actually get on board with this, though, I imagine the USB spec will have iterated again and it will be continuously confusing until a new connector type standard comes along and resets all this nonsense.
This is the most frustrating thing about the usb if, in my opinion. Every single device manufacturer has been using the usb 3.0/3.1/3.2 branding since usb 3 was released. There is no reason to think that the manufacturers would change now. What’s more, if it were consistent, that branding would be more sensible than their suggested marketing branding. 3.0 for 5gbps, 3.1 for 10gbps, and 3.2 for 20gbps (please note this is false; just an example of what they could do).
Instead, the usb if buries their head in the sand. They rename and change the spec codes knowing that the manufacturers will use them to market their devices. Given how widespread this issue is (I too have never seen the usb if recommended marketing names on many devices. At most it is just a keyword in the keyword soup that is most store listings), it can only be willful ignorance.
Actually willful ignorance is the most favorable interpretation. It is also possible this is intentional maliciousness. Changing the spec names for existing products can be implied obsolescence. For example, a customer gets a new computer that now supports usb 3.2 Gen 2 vs their old computer that was usb 3.1 Gen 2. Now they have to upgrade all their old cables to 3.2 Gen 2 cables to get the best performance out of their computer. However 3.1 Gen 2 is the exact same spec as 3.2 Gen 2. The only difference is If the cable was made before or after an almost unrelated spec, usb 3.2 Gen 2x2.
Likely because, for batteries that people see, that is still the most common and distinctive battery shape. AA and AAA batteries are reasonably common, and even many modern devices use cylindrical cells (eg, 18650 cells). The pouch batteries of modern devices that need flat batteries are usually not seen, and don't have a distinct shape. Cylindrical cells are really quite common, and tend to all look quite similar. Even 9V batteries, the other shape that might be familiar (because of smoke alarms...) sometimes just have cylindrical cells inside them.
AA and AAA batteries may still be quite common, but the intersection of devices that charge via USB type-C PD and devices that have AA/AAA batteries inside is minuscule. Not to mention, some devices that will draw power over USB don’t even have batteries at all.
The point is that it's a recognizable and unambiguous symbol for the concept of batteries, regardless of the underlying shape or chemistry. It's also why save icons are dominated by a depiction of a storage format that's been obsolete for 30 years. It communicates what it's meant to clearly, even if it's not technically correct most of the time.
If you’re referring to using disks/diskettes as iconography for “save” dialogs, then yeah, I have the same issue with that. Though, thankfully, in modern software designs, the need to manually save data by pressing a button/clicking an icon has met the same fate as the antiquated media on which the skeuomorphic icons on which they were based. Just because something is commonplace, or has historically been commonplace, doesn’t mean it’s not still bad design nor anachronistic in the present.
Do you propose an alternative that still communicates its intent clearly or is this something more of a pet peeve? The purpose of design like this is to clearly communicate something, if it succeeds in that goal unambiguously it seems to me to be a good design in at least that respect.
I’m not a designer and I don’t need to be a designer to find flaws in current designs. I disagree that the current design is clear in its intentions. If the USB IF insists on pictograms/iconography, I would think developing something along the lines of the way standard laundry care pictograms work would suffice? At the very least have a battery icon with an X over it for cables that don’t carry power?