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Comment by oddity | Hacker News Reader

This isn't a case of a standard coming along to a crowded market. Rather, this is the opposite scenario. USB-C won and now they have to deal with the fallout of unifying all the things past, present, and future.

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Previously we had tons of incompatible plugs, but if the physical plug fit, you were reasonably assured that it would actually work. In our shiny new future everything is shaped like USB-C, but you can't tell whether anything will work simply by eyeballing the plug. I'm not convinced this is progress.

Or, you just buy ones adequate to your needs. Buy one visual style for charging, another for data, or label them if you are really neurotic. You can definitely tell the better ones, they are thicker and stiffer.

I'm all too eager to deprecate my box o' rando mini/micro/meso USB A/B/hard drive cables.

> Previously we had tons of incompatible plugs, but if the physical plug fit, you were reasonably assured that it would actually work.

I suspect you never did any work with 9 or 25 pin serial.

Touché, I actually did and even soldered my own at times! I'm tempted to say that's different (tm) though, since you generally had zero expectation that random DB-9/25 cables would be interchangeable.

I never want to see a serial breakout box or HP 4952 serial analyzer again.

(actually I lie it would be cool to have a 4952 to play around with again)

That's fairly recent. At this point in the adoption curve of usb1/2 we had different cables and chargers for different brands of phones. And some did not have the data wires connected.

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