I'm mostly fine with how USB has turned out - USB-A ports on computers and chargers, microUSB on devices, and slowly everything is being replaced with USB-C. (and we can all forget about those wide microUSB superspeed plugs)

What really chafes me is MiniUSB. It was superseded by microUSB 12 years ago, but it STILL turns up in brand-new devices. I recently bought an action cam, a dashcam, and a retro input device converter that all had MiniUSB. I only had a single MiniUSB cable for my PS3 controller so I had to go out and buy a bunch of obsolete cables.

Reading threads where the independent maker of the retro converter was defending his choice, "I find MiniUSB is more sturdy". So now everyone buying his thing needs to stock another kind of cable for a device where the socket isn't even going to see much wear and tear. (and MiniUSB being more sturdy is debatable - the socket is designed for much fewer insert/remove cycles).

Mini is more sturdy. I've destroyed a lot of micro devices over the years, never a single mini. Most of my workbench devices (serial converters, logic analyzers, etc) are mini, so they see a lot of use and abuse, but they just keep going. Micro is incredibly fragile in comparison.

Also, a lot of devices like the Gopro and Tomtom came out when Mini was current, and kept compatibility for years to respect their customers who had invested in accessories and stuff, and didn't want all that to become useless if they upgraded to the new unit. I appreciate that.

The problem is that Mini USB tends to fail on the device side, while Micro USB is designed to fail on the cable side.

That may indeed be the design intent, but it's completely at odds with my experience across hundreds of devices and cables over the years.

Micro has rendered numerous devices irreparable, or not-economical-to-repair, because the device-side connector fails. Thermal cameras, audio adapters, countless cellphones. Thankfully my daily-driver phones tend to be Samsungs which keep their USB connector on an easy-to-replace sub-board, but I can't say so much for FLIR's finest. I've thrown out my share of flaky micro cables, too, but those are cheap to replace. It's the device-side failures that have rained on my parade for years.

Mini, on the other hand, has been bulletproof. Countless Beaglebone Black boards, FTDI adapters, logic analyzers strewn about my bench, my TomTom, my GoPro, even my old Blackberry was mini. And not a single one of them ever died because of a USB connector problem. (The magic smoke has escaped from more than a few, but that's another story entirely!) I've thrown out plenty of mini cables, sure, but the device-side connectors simply don't fail like their supposed design would suggest.

Regardless of their intent, I consider inclusion of a micro port to simply be a design flaw at this point. Mini or C is the way to go.

The industry has decided that it is more profitable to make you buy adapters or a new device every couple of years (and create more e-waste in the process), hence the accelerating churn. And each new revision of the standard will introduce its own set of problems, guaranteeing them something to do for the next revision after that; but the churn situation with USB isn't actually that bad:

    USB 1.0 - 1996
    USB 1.1 - 1998
    USB 2.0 - 2000
    USB 3.0 - 2008
    USB 4.0 - 2019

Also, the vast majority of devices are still 1.x/2.x speed, so it might be more of a diminishing returns type of situation.

Appart from storage and video, there is just no need to go over USB 2.0. My brand new USB microphone uses USB 2 because there is no advantage at all to USB 3.0 for this device.

I have a single USB 3.0 external hard drive. Everything else is USB 2.0. It's fantastic, I never have to worry about whether I have the right cord or if the device supports it, and in the rare case where I need to transfer a file large enough that sending it over the Internet would be a bottleneck, I just toss it on the external HDD.

USB 4.0 doth not exist. The string '4.0' does not appear in the zipped PDF. There is only USB4™

I'm very excited that, just three weeks ago, I bought my first laptop with USB3 ports, which will soon be Yesterday's Hotness.

You know what's nice about USB3 ports though? They're also USB1 and USB2 ports, so they work with like every peripheral made for the last 20 years.

Honestly, I have a new Dell XPS, and in my opinion it has the ideal port combination: 2x USB3, 1x HDMI, 1x USB-C. I'm covered for the past, present, and immediate future. The only loser is a handful of peripherals that plugged into Thunderbolt on my old MBP (basically an Ethernet and Firewire adapter).

You know what's nice about Type-C ports though? They're also USB1 and USB2, and USB3 ports (with a cheap adapter), so they work with like every peripheral made for the last 20 years.

- my cassette player is a CD player (with a cheap adapter)

- my VGA port is an HDMI port (with a cheap adapter)

- my wall outlet is a micro-USB port (with a cheap adapter)

- my Lightning port is a headphone jack (with a cheap adapter)

Adapter-based compatibility is so convenient.

All of these are active adapters USB-C to USB-A is passive(except a resistor). You can use USB-C to MicroUSB-B instead of USB-A to MicroUSB-B cables if your device is not hardwired.

> Type-C ports

> They're also USB1 and USB2, and USB3

> work with like every peripheral made for the last 20 years

too bad there is no guarantee they will work with devices with Type-C ports as the type-C port is a mess and there is no mention on the standard on how to communicate capabilities of the port. Can it do thunderbolt? who knows?! can it charge the device? who knows?! Can it run PCIe lanes? who knows?!

Actually the basic USB fallbacks and simple charging are all handled through passives (resistors) and 100% of Type C cables will support them. Sadly that's the only thing you can depend on by inspection.

Communication of port capabilities are described in the spec; not sure about cable capabilities though.

You'd think that companies couldn't mess up a simple resistor. https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1vnpEXfo2HCGADdd9G2x9... proves that wrong.

The charging thing in particular seems like a disaster— the situation is bad enough with dedicated power supplies, where we have Amazon pages listing specific devices and laptop models that are known to work; but then there's this whole classes of setups where the correct behaviour isn't even knowable without directly querying the user. If I plug that USB-C battery bank into my laptop, should it be charging the bank from the laptop, or charging the laptop from the bank? Does it depend on whether the laptop is plugged in or not? If the laptop is plugged in to a current-limited source, should it prioritize charging the bank or its internal battery? Gaah.

Here's what the Android prompt for this looks like: https://www.quora.com/Devices-can-charge-or-be-charged-via-U...

Aren’t the adaptors for USBC quite a bit more expensive? Is t there essentially a chip in the cable?

No, adapters from USB-C to the older USB ports are completely passive, they only have a pair of resistors to identify as an adapter.

To be fair, you've certainly taken your time; USB 3.0 has been with us for about 8 years at this point.

Out of the 4 computers I use regularly, only my work laptop has USB 3.0 and it was given to me less than a year ago.

Taking my time? The computers work exceptionally well. USB 3.0 doesn't seem reason enough to replace them, and much less does USB C which is not compatible with any of my devices.

USB-C is a revelation - power, display, storage, all through one cable.

Bah, the big innovation is the reversible connector. Not sure why that took so long.

Exactly. The old USB connector is just horrible... not only is it non-reversible, but it doesn’t “feel” good. I swear my average number of attempts to plug one in is >2, because even if you get the right orientation, if the alignment isn’t perfect it feels like it’s wrong.

The Type-C connector isn't perfect either, if it is only slightly misaligned my screen goes black, sometimes a small bump to the connector is enough. Good thing I don't have external drives connected to it (yet).

Shrinking these connectors has gone too far.

If you look back through old stack overflow questions about the reversibility you’ll find people saying it can’t be done any other way, giving all sorts of demonstrably false arguments about it being impossible to arrange wires like that!

I never understood why something like 4-pole 2.5mm phono wasn't used for USB. Then you'd have no orientation issues at all, and fumble-insertion would be trivial.

An argument I've heard against this is that a rotating connector wouldn't be electrically stable enough. But this is easily addressed - you could easily add a toothed collar to the plug preventing it from rotating, at the small cost of there being a finite number of dozens of possible orientations, instead a continuous infinity. Or better, just design the protocol to be tolerant to packet loss.

Audio jack has this problem that it shorts contacts during insertion/removal. It wouldn't be compliant with EMI too.

Even if they didn't want to make it reversible they could have made it...something like a rectangle. VGA cables are easy to see the orientation of since they are trapezoidal.

I haven't seen these arguments, but not passively reversible perhaps? (Isn't there logic in the cable or something like that?)

Just picture a USB-A connector. You know the metal plates on the tongue? Put metal plates on the underside as well. Connect each plate on one side, to the plate on the other side, but at the reverse end of the tongue. There you go - passive reversible.

Passive reversible USB-A is actually rather common, as a quick search will show; I first noticed this on USB drives (double-sided tongue), but cables are available with those connectors too. The reversible females look quite a bit more fragile than the males; the latter is simply a double-sided tongue, while the former has the contact block thinned to a double-contacted septum.

Reversible micro-B is also a thing, I recently bought such cable.

I read in an interview with the original USB instigator that he wanted reversible cables but in order to get a standard organized and agreed to they had to go for a non-reversible cable to cut BOM cost.

That's a revelation? Thunderbolt has had all that for nearly a decade now.

But that's not the point, is it? The point is that after 8 years, it's exceedingly reasonable for a standard to be superseded.

No, it's not. The longer a standard lasts the better. 8 years is really short. I can still connect new earphones to the jack of my CD player from 20 years ago, or my even older mini-cassette player. That's a good standard. What kind of standard lasts less than 10 years?

I mean, if you want to stick to the 1.5 MB/s transfer rates of USB 1, more power to you.

Analog audio technology was basically perfected 40 years ago with the Walkman. You couldn't develop a significantly better connector today, even the size was optimal for small portable devices.

Data transfer technology OTOH is still improving by leaps and bounds, and the old ports are too big for modern portable devices like tablets and phones.

Agreed! Now XLR, THATS a good standard. Been around since the 1950s at least, and still the de facto connector today. Sure, you need to insulate against background interference and account for ground hum, but honestly that makes me for a clean connection when done right. XLR and Ethernet is all we need.

i still pine for the world envisioned by the first PoE working group; a world where every house's power outlets are just rj45s.

Wow! Never knew this was a thing. Would that be enough to power heavier load appliances (toaster ovens, window AC, etc)?

it's at that state now, yes. 100W PoE is standardized and available on the market. the standards body dragged their feet for a couple decades, vendors implemented their own proprietary high-power PoE injectors and devices, and a lot of the momentum behind PoE died out due to incompatibility hell. imagine every power outlet in your house was networked, could support gigabit data transfer, and the whole thing was so safe you could jam a fork into the outlet whenever the whim struck you -- that was the original dream.

60Hz Electric Grid: 122 years in service.

NEMA 1-15: 115 years in service.

IPv4: 41 years in service.

IPv6: 24 years in service.

Seatbelts: 53 years in service.

Some things are better not replaced every 8 years.

I super agree with everything, with the probable exception of Seatbelts. Is that even a standard with a concern for compatibility? I'm not sure if I can plug the belt of one car to the seat of another. Would be cool, I guess. If my seatbelt ever breaks, I guess that would mean I can obtain a "standard" seatbelt without worrying about compatibility.

There are "heavy" people who carry a seat belt extender because most cars don't have a long enough seat belt without it. So yes there is a compatibility concern.

Though there isn't a standard. Different manufactures use different connectors, not to mention air planes.

There's a standard in that cars must have them, and they must have certain properties in terms of abrasion, strength, surface area etc.

I agree with your general sentiment but NEMA 1-15 must go (it kills a few people each year) and so must IPv4 (it spawned NAT which destroyed the Internet).

My Logitech wireless headphones don't work well with USB 3.x, they only output stereo sound.

It is required to use an USB 2.0 port to get surround sound.

USB 3.x is also unreliable to no end. My external disks, all using USB 3, only worked with the very fast speed for a week or so. Then the cable dies and it is basically just as fast as USB 2.

So, 8 years of unreliability. What a terrible record.

My desktop is plenty powerful, but doesn't have USB 3. Nice to know I can skip it and just get USB 4 on my next mobo.

Type C is the intended replacement for Micro, A and B.

then they should stop including USB C to USB C cables in every new phone I buy

It's the intended replacement, why would they stop including it in new purchases?

I think OP tried to argue that if USB-C is just a replacement for Micro and Mini then why USB-A -> USB-Micro is replaced with USB-C -> USB-C instead of USB-A -> USB-C. This proves that USB-C is a replacement not only for Mini and Micro, but for -A too.

It's intended as a replacement...

Why?

No... usb-c is just a connector

Micro, A, and B, are also just connectors.

USB is that standard.

The awesome thing about USB-C is all you need is a couple USB-A to USB-C adapters, which are cheap, and bam—all your devices are now compatible forward.

And if you already have a USB hub all you need is one adapter.

The USB-C Standard explicitly forbids use of USB-anything to USB-C adapters. Buy a USB-C to USB-other cable instead of trying to light your computer on fire.

The reason it is forbidden is because using two adapters you can convert a USB-C cable into a USB-A to USB-A cable. USB-A ports are not required to handle exciting and unexpected voltage on the wrong pins.

The prohibition is only against USB-anything to USB-C socket. Adapters to USB-C plug are allowed (and can't create the invalid combination you just described).

Apart from fast charging or connecting monitors via USB etc.

Which are things your device also did not do when you bought it. "Forward-compatible"!=="magic upgrade".

I'm sure USB-D will bring the solution for all of your problems!

can't wait for USBS

Stop buying stuff. If you can't do that, stop buying stuff that's incompatible with the stuff you already have.

This is a large but hardly the only aspect of compatibility:

- Can I use friends'/family's chargers? Can I use public chargers?

- Are my cables going to become difficult to find? Can I pick one up at the corner store in the middle of the night because mine failed?

- What's going to happen when I need to interact with old hardware? Are converters available?

Compatibility problems don't arise in perfect conditions, when you're at your desk with all your own current equipment. They arise in all the edge cases you will have to deal with over the at least several years you have a device.

Presumably they will obsolete use of USB4 over non-Type-C cabling since the older 3.x compatible connectors are hacks. That means, moving forward, everything from 1.1, 2.0, 3.x, and 4 will run on the same cabling.

Intermediate hubs will downgrade bandwidth if they can't support the same speed as their upstream host so there will be an element of mystery there without clear markings.