USB-C solves problems that nobody actually had, and in doing so creates a bunch of new ones that are expensive and difficult to solve for the end user. It isn’t quite as dumb as 801.11ad docking, but it’s close.
Once do-it-all chipsets get cheaper, all ports will do everything a user expects of them.
Type-C isn't great TODAY and that's because many implementations of Type-C are first generation.
Shitting on 1st generation technology implementations and saying it's a technology problem rather than an implementation problem isn't helping.
When the first USB rolled out I don't remember any issues like this. The big problem with previous tech was lack of support (like only having one usb-2 port and the rest being usb-1.1) and expensive cables (we do have those with USB-C). These[1] were fairly ubiquitous for a good 10 years and I don't remember any issues.
I feel like there could have been better consumer-facing design--like color bands to mark support on cables and ports (just like USB-2 was blue and USB-3 were red). They would designate if a cable or port would support Thunderbolt, USB-3, HDMI, DisplayPort, or high power. Resistors have been doing it for almost 100 years and this version would be much simpler. Or like PCI-E have like a lane system where more lanes support higher level features.
But this isn't only a branding problem with incompatible cables. You just can't have a USB-C hub with this standard. From my (possibly flawed) understanding, because USB-C switches modes to carry something like DisplayPort, for example, you can't also carry a USB-C signal at the same time, so you can't split USB-C (without one of the ports shutting off while in that mode). Maybe you could if you hub didn't support those exclusive modes? I haven't seen any actual USB-C hubs for sale (that give you more USB-C ports on the other side).
[1] https://images10.newegg.com/ProductImageCompressAll300/12-20...
A USB-C connector has one USB 2.0 pair, four high-speed differential pairs, and two sideband wires. For USB 2.0 you need only the USB 2.0 pair, for USB 3.1 you need the USB 2.0 pair and two of the high-speed differential pairs.
For DisplayPort, you need two or four of the differential pairs, plus the two sideband wires. If you're using two of the differential pairs for DisplayPort, you can use the full USB 3.1 at the same time; if you're using four of the differential pairs for DisplayPort, you still have USB 2.0 left.
The same applies to other alternate modes. As long as they need at most two of the differential pairs, you have USB 3.1, otherwise you have USB 2.0. And power delivery has its own set of wires, so it's also always available.
(The exception is the 3.5mm plug adapter alternate mode, where everything except analog audio and slow charging is unavailable.)
I'm not sure how all those one-cable USB-C docking stations work then, as they carry video and audio one direction (to the dock and then out to the screen), and multiple USB devices and power the other direction (from the wall and connected peripherals and through the dock). If it truly couldn't do multiple things at once, none of these docking stations would work with a single cable, and they do.
This post[1] says > What the problems is - how the USB-C lines within a cable are used is determined at plug-in time, depending on what you plug in downstream of the port. For example, you can't have full speed USB 3.1 and full video at the same time. So the USB-C makes a choice for you. If you plug in both a high-res monitior and USB 3, then you can't have both at once.
Still not technically clear to me. It does sound like with just a hub your transfer speed will drop when using a hub and driving a monitor. Maybe the limitation I'm thinking of is if USB-C is carrying something like Thunderbolt, you can't carry a second Thunderbolt signal? Because USB-C splitting compromises so much, they're so rare in the market?
I have heard the order in which you plug in USB-C will tell it which direction to charge (which gives credence to things being determined at plug-in time). For example, plugging the cable into your phone then plugging it into a computer will make the phone charge the computer instead of vice versa. When I heard that they were speaking about a specific phone and laptop, so it wasn't theoretical, but I'm having a hard time corroborating this. This [2] article says the direction power flows is a computer setting. What's scary is there's a lot of articles warning you not to use your USB-C laptop charger to charge your phone because it could fry it.
[1] https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/206365/why-are-the...
[2] https://www.digitaltrends.com/computing/charging-via-usb-c/
Even if the signals of some ports are electrically compatible, I try to use different shapes of connector for them if they are not logically compatible (the functions are fixed, not swappable). Because you can be sure nobody will always look at icons which are faint, small, can only be seen correctly under a certain angle and light, etc. Supposing you even know which icon means what. Supposing you can even have a sight of the icon and port, that it is hidden behind something and you have to try if it fits blindly.
You do not want to be called every other day because "it doesn't work anymore" because someone connected the wrong device to the wrong port :-). So for some serial ports with incompatible functions, you do not put all DB-9 ports, you put 1 DB-9, 1 round DIN, 1 rectangular (and hope they do not manage to fit the rectangular connector in the DB-9), 1 DB-25... It looks messy, shambolic? Yes it does. Definitely. But it is efficient because it is idiot-proof. And I mean a very large definition of 'idiot' which encompasses about everyone.
I can tell you about the number of times I 'plug' a USB cable into a DisplayPort or the power cable into the telephone plug because they sit in the same area and have sort of compatible shapes... I generally quickly notice because it does not fit well, but just imagine the nightmare if they were truly the same physical connectors...
I think the point of USB-C is that the same port can support both functions, and so you don't have to care into which port you actually plug-in the cable. My proposal was just for when you were buying a new device, to make sure it supported the same technology as your existing devices - only then you would compare the icons.
Is it possible to purchase USB-C cables that work for everything? Or are (some of) the different supported protocols incompatible?
I would much rather have 4 USB-C ports than even 8 ports that all do one thing only. It's like having $40 cash instead of 8x $10 gift certificates (of which perhaps only one you might want to use).
It wouldn't be so bad if it wasn't for the fact that USB-C/TB3 has been such a disaster and even mechanically a disappointment.
But it's never actually worked, I ended up RMAing the docking station. Since the laptop itself can only support one display, I can't have dual monitors. So now I have a 43" 4K monitor, a USB hub and a power connector that I need to plug in/out all the time. And Win10 still gets confused about DPIs and scaling and stuff.
On my ancient-but-still-kicking Dell Precision, at least the docking station actually works and you can simply click in and out in three seconds.
For me, I'm enjoying the power of the USB-c/Thunderbolt connector on my Dell XPS. I use a docking station, which I'm sending 4k video and audio out to while receiving video, mouse, ethernet and power over the same cable. One cable docking is amazing, and really shows off the possibilities of the technology (although in this case I'm pretty sure it's Thunderbolt doing the heavy lifting).
But even my CPU could manage to have 8 lanes feeding a GPU and 8 lanes feeding a switch for the thunderbolt ports, something that provides enough bandwidth for the vast majority of use cases.
... But they have already disappeared. The 13" Macbook Pro that I'm talking about just has those two USB-C ports and none of the others. If you are plugged in for power you just have one port.
My old 10.1" has:
* 1 power connector
* 1 ethernet connector
* 1 VGA connector
* 3 USB ports
* 2 audio jacks
* 1 memory card slot
* 1 mysterious connector
This is old, but still gold