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Comment by gempir | Hacker News Reader

I always thought the full move to USB-C was the right one. Only someone like Apple could have pulled it off and forced all of their customers to change the way they use their devices but now we are better off because if it.

I connect a single USB C Cable to connect 2 extra monitors, mouse, keyboard, ethernet and extra USB ports.

This was only possible on proprietary Docks like Dell or Lenovo beforehand. Now even those moved to USB-C Docks and everyone can use most USB-C Docks.

Dongles are just for transitioning.

Did Apple make a pretty penny on selling you extra crap you didn't need before? Of course they did. But I still prefer USB-C over having a bunch of different ports on a laptop that I have to each connect every time I want to "undock" my laptop.

And now those technologies are shared beyond manufacturer lines and you don't have to buy a Dell specific dock.

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>Now even those moved to USB-C Docks and everyone can use most USB-C Docks.

This is actually a common point of confusion exacerbated by USB-C. The good docks have moved on to Thunderbolt with a USB-C connector, not USB-C per se. The plain USB-C "docks" on the market are usually horrendous - basically just USB hubs with onboard ethernet adapter and a terrible USB-driven video card if there's a port for display output, and often have severe usability and reliability issues (overheating; inability to do power pass-through correctly; odd bugs like power draw on other ports resetting your ethernet and display).

Whether a particular USB-C accessory actually works or not should be very simple, but it very often isn't. All sorts of issues crop up in practical reality because there are many protocols and feature sets all bundled into one connector and not all devices implement them. Go to the reviews of practically any USB-C accessory and you'll find a mix of people perfectly satisfied with the function of the device and people with devices for which it doesn't work at all.

There's also a bunch of features with little caveats that confuse people wildly. Literally a few minutes ago my boss was puzzled as to why her USB-C Mini Displayport adapter wasn't working, and what we realized is that it was connected through a docking station with an HDMI port on it, and despite the fact that nothing was plugged into this port, it was still consuming the Displayport signal for the port and not passing it on to its children.

Some of this stuff might be intuitive to someone who understands, but the average user doesn't know or really want to know why the port on the dock is different from the one on their computer even though they look the same.

My only complaint about USB-C is that the different abilities of the port aren't visually distinguishable. You can't tell by looking at it if a USB-C port has power delivery. Other people have written more extensively about this complaint, that's just the one example that I constantly worry about.

It sure is simpler if you know what standards your USB-C port supports, but if you don't it's way easier to have the older ports where you can have one glance at them and know their function instead of having to look through the spec sheet.

There was an article on HN a few days ago discussing just this issue.

Would it be possible to make a thing you can plug into a USB-C port that then checks the capabilities of the port and then tells you what it supports?

I bought a dock from OWC and I cannot connect the power cable and the HDMI cable at the same time. My mouse stops responding and everything heats up like it's nobody's business.

While a single cable connected to a dock is a great idea, in reality, I am left with two three cables on top of a dock.

Is it actually a Thunderbolt dock? Your symptoms are pretty typical of the junk USB hubs masquerading as a 'dock'.

Yes, it is a thunderbolt travel dock by Other World Computing (OWC).

Docks are just for transitioning.

If/when all devices use USB-C you just plug your first monitor in and then use it's USB-C hub to connect all other devices.

Not just if/when, even before all devices use USB-C. My monitor is where I plug in USB-A devices, like USB sticks.

"When laptops use USB-C" is sufficient criteria, and that's already true.

Said differently, good monitors are docks these days.

I was doing this in 2015 via Thunderbolt 2. The transition to USB-C combined power and data at the cost of MagSafe and being able to trust that if a cord plugs in to the socket it will work. I don’t think that was a fair trade.

> Only someone like Apple could have pulled it off and forced all of their customers to change the way they use their devices but now we are better off because if it.

They didn't force "all" of their customers to change. Some of us left their ecosystem entirely. My ThinkPad now suits me quite nicely using my devices the way I want to.

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