> Can it be fixed by not buying crappy cables?

Unfortunately that isn't enough yet, as there is no "universal" cable, and may never be. You can have an excellent cable that nonetheless fails for what you plugged it into, or (potentially worse) falls back to something that kind of works (e.g. a slow data transfer through a port that supports PCI-e).

The biggest botch the committee made was not mandating connector labeling. I'd have gone with colors, but not everyone can see them. If the cable had resistor-style stripes to indicate what it supported, and if the ports on the host devices did likewise we'd be in much better shape. Even some licensed logos would have helped though the connectors are so tiny.

Then again the names the USB committee has come up with in the past (high speed, SuperSpeed, 3.0, 3.1 etc) have uniformly been confusing rather than elucidating.

In my case I agree: I have had nothing but success with Type C, and it has simplified my life (except for the lack of high power chargers). But I had to learn more than most people would or should have to in order to get there.

Really? I'd just naively assumed that USB-C cables sold by Apple and Google would be universal.

What is missing that they aren't universal? Is there some kind of tradeoff between full power load and full data transmission capacity or something?

The cable is not a dub set of wires; there's a a lot of silicon in the connectors. Though they fall back by default to the old resistor sensing used in earlier USB specs, the higher functions (which include power delivery) are negotiated.

As far as I know a universal cable is not possible. My reading of the spec says that it should be but I am not a USB implementor and some of my friends who are tell me it's not possible. In any case nobody ships such a thing.

The charging cables provided with devices are likely to be power-only. With the 87W charger, Apple ships ones that can carry about 100W (the maximum per USB spec -- 20V@5A) which requires thicker conductors; my understanding is that those cables don't carry data (i.e. they can safely be plugged into any third party brick without you worrying that the remote device will attack your computer). You want a power-only cable for this purpose. I am not sure of they have the same cable with the smaller adaptors.

The very high speed cables only work over short distances unless you go to optical (which I'm not sure anybody has deployed).

The most standard cables carry "USB 3.1" which is just another name for USB 3.0 carried over Type C connectors. The higher frequency and higher power cables are more expensive to design and build so will cost the customer more. That's one reason you have to specifically look for cables for DP, PCI-e/Thunderbolt etc.

> The most standard cables carry "USB 3.1" which is just another name for USB 3.0 carried over Type C connectors.

No, it's not; USB 3.1 adds the new SuperSpeed+ mode over all supported connector types (and USB 3.2 adds two additional SuperSpeed+ modes for Type-C connectors.)

USB Type-C connector spec is a separate spec issued after USB 3.1, USB 3.1 isn't USB 3.0 over Type-C connectors.

Note that there is USB 3.1 Gen1 (limited to 5Gbps) and USB 3.1 Gen2 (limited to 10Gbps).

Overall, I think a quick glance at the whole discussion under my comment proves my point quite well.

I meant 3.1 Gen1 & Gen2, sorry, as mentioned by jwr.

USB C != Thunderbolt 3 != Thunderbolt 3 < 1m, but all of them have the same port.

Things like charging your phone can be done with USB C.

Things like external hard drive are generally done with Thunderbolt

Things like External GPU's have to be done with a Thunderbolt cable that is less than 1m

All of that said, I am not 100% sure of all of that, because it is all so confusing.

OK... is is just a Mac-only Thunderbolt issue then, which I guess you could kind of say is a problem with Apple and not with USB-C itself?

If you ignore Thunderbolt, can you always rely on the latest USB-C cables Apple and Google sell working for everything? Or are there still issues?

Apple isn't the only vendor using Thunderbolt 3. According to Wikipedia [0], the following vendors have all shipped devices with at least one port: Acer, Asus, Clevo, HP, Dell, Dell Alienware, Lenovo, MSI, Razer, and Sony.

This affects everyone.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thunderbolt_(interface)#Thunde...

No, this has entirely to do with thunderbolt and USB spec.

Dating back to the early days of Apple, they have been hyper conformant with the spec (e.g. no drivers needed to connect to conforming devices). They still are.

I answered your question about which cables above.

> Things like external hard drive are generally done with Thunderbolt

Why? External USB drives are much more common.

Thunderbolt 3 is 40 Gb/s of PCIe + DP — basically exposes your bus out through a Type C connector. USB theoretically tops out, as of last year, at half tha, though in practice you won’t see anything faster than USB 3.0 (if you’re lucky) which tops out at 625 MB/s, before all the USB protocol overhead.

TL;DR: USB drives are really really slow.

> though in practice you won’t see anything faster than USB 3.0 (if you’re lucky) which tops out at 625 MB/s

625 MB/s is 5Gb/s; the switch from bits to bytes seems to be a way to exaggerate the difference from Thunderbolt speeds quoted in GB/s; at any rate, USB 3.1 Gen 2 (equivalent to USB 3.2 Gen 2×1) 10 GB/s cables and device support isn't hard to find; I don't know that anyone had USB 3.2 hardware (controllers, or cables supporting the new 2×2, 20Gb/s, mode) yet.

625 MB/s is "really really slow"? I don't know any HDD which can deliver more than 100 MB/s. And for SSDs there's also USB 3.1 Gen 2.

The main reason you can't make a truly universal USB cable is the same reason you can't make a universal ethernet cable. You can make a cat5e cable, you can make a cat6 cable, you can make a cat8 cable. But you can't make a cable that's guaranteed to support anything.

Currently there are four common speeds/specs for the high-speed lanes: none, USB 3.0 at 5GHz, USB 3.1 at 10GHz, Thunderbolt 3 at 20GHz.

Cables that can support the higher speeds without signal loss issues tend to also be increasingly short. That's another issue getting in the way of an ideal cable; it's hard to carry such high frequencies to the same distances.

There's no tradeoff between speed and 100W support, but most cables do lack 100W support for whatever reason.

A lot of cables (even from Apple and Google) pick the "none" option for high speed lanes. Such a cable can only run at USB 2.0 speed and is often called a "charging-only" cable. (True charging-only cables are significantly more rare. They also probably violate the spec.)

> What exactly am I missing from the whole issue, since I don't seem to be having any problems?

Dude, you're using a pair of headphones that cost more than most people's cellphones and laptops. Normals use years-old Android devices, out-of-date Windows 7 laptops and the absolute cheapest peripherals from the drug store.

Of course that stuff is going to be buggy.

Even the Nintendo Switch, due to its hardware, uses the highly unusual "myDP" USB-C display standard instead of conventional alternate mode.

How do people using old hardware have issues with USB-C?

Probably what the OP meant was that people who don't have that much money to splash around won't be bothered to pay crazy money for the "right" connector cables. For example I just got a new Mac Mini (which I genuinely like until now) and I just checked to see how much a USB to USB-C connector costs on Apple's website. When I saw that it costs $20 I said "f.ck it, I'm going to buy the 4.50 euro no-name connector that I just found online". I suppose I'm not the only user thinking like this.

The Amazon Basics USB to USB-C cable that pops up when you search for usb-c cable on Amazon is $6. That should be reputable enough that you won't damage your $800 computer without having to shell out $20 to Apple for their branding on a cable.

I think you are mostly lucky in that you only need a limited subset of the full functionality. You were lucky with video, you probably don't need Thunderbolt, your charging needs are modest, and you don't care about peculiarities like USB 3.1 Gen 2 speeds. In that scenario things will usually work fine, assuming you don't save on cables.

But it's enough to just read the cable reviews to learn that things are not always fine.

Also, one thing which cannot be blamed on "crappy cables" is that the presence of a USB-C port on a computer does not mean much at all, because in general one has no idea what can be connected to it.

the problem that ^can^ occur is drawing overcurrent. usbc is supposed to support higher power demands, and if your usb port cant pass the current because its made of components too fine/resistive for the current being drawn, then {P@FF!}

PD hosts are required to monitor and limit current draw. Any magic smoke released is the fault of the host device, not the peripheral that tried to draw too much current.

thats what i mean, and when they dont limit current draw because despite being required to the design is cheaper faster not better, then thats it. you get heat at the highest resistance so port gets very hot and undervoltage beyond that resistance, so device gets wonky, unless it is regulated, to prop up the voltage

That's not how it works (ohm's law for firsts)