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Comment by korginator | Hacker News Reader

USB-A should be relegated to the rubbish-heap of poorly designed interfaces for the simple reason that it has no physical indication (e.g., RS-232C) or clear visual indicator for orientation, and you get it wrong 50% of the time. It's way beyond time the USB-A interface is eliminated. USB-C can't get here fast enough.

My MacBook pro only has USB-C ports, they work well for data, video out, as well as power (charging) and I am glad to be rid of the USB-A ports.

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This said, USB-C needs to have its standards updated, and standardised. Eg all cables must support a minimum of USB 3.1 with power and data, with appropriate shielding. Stop yielding so many concessions. I'm already in a spot where I have a number of USB-C to C cable varieties that all look basically the same, but have very different characteristics. One cable basically refuses to charge anything. Another has no data capabilities. Another can carry decent power, but data is seemingly slower than USB 2.0. It's an absolute shitshow that manufacturers can ship something with USB-C ends and carrying USB-C markings that meets an arbitrary free for all standard.

A big part of this is that a lot of manufacturers are just completely ignoring the standards.

The standards specify a rather limited set of cables, and it specifies clear ways to label them which make it extremely obvious to consumers what the cable is capable of. But manufacturers just... can't be bothered to actually follow the standard.

The main reason why there isn't one cable is that it has mutually-incompatible goals. A high-speed data cable needs expensive, thick, shielded data wires - and is limited to about 80 cm in length due to signal integrity issues. All completely fine for connecting a laptop to a docking station.

On the other hand, a smartphone charging cable needs to be cheap, long, and flexible - but it doesn't need to carry high-speed data. The aforementioned docking station cable would technically work, but it'd be $30 rather than $3 and provide a far worse user experience.

>it'd be $30 rather than $3

I think this is the big one. Having only fast cables is already possible. Just toss out all your unknown and slower USB-C cables, and buy a bunch of known good 30$ Thunderbolt 4 cables to replace them all. You don't need to force manufacturers to do anything.

But I'm sure the majority of users don't care about USB 4 or Thunderbolt on all their cables. They've probably never used USB-C for mass data transfers, it's a charging cable, or maybe a USB 2.0 data rate devices like a Playstation controller or a headphones adapter now that 3.5mm jack is dead. Even most of the enthusiasts here probably don't care about spending an extra 5$ to upgrade their keyboard's USB-C cable to USB 3. It's just a waste of money.

For average consumers it's great. I think my phone is the only thing I own that could use 3.1(I assume, I've never looked because I do most everything wireless).

Almost everything (Including my 200Wh solar generator!) Will charge from 5v at 5W on a regular USB, and almost nothing really needs more than that, slow charging is quite often fine for phones and tablets.

Phones tell you if they slow charge, so it's just a matter of keeping the good cable plugged in the good adapter.

For the way most people use USB-C, as a power cable that can do data with a little extra work when needed, it's already great.

and you get it wrong 50% of the time

I've seen this mentioned before, and I don't get it. Never ever have I inserted an USB-type A plug upside down. There have been instances where I had to fumble around to find the right port, but that never resulted in inserting the plug in the wrong way. How much force do you need to apply to even achieve that?

> USB-A should be relegated to the rubbish-heap of poorly designed interfaces for the simple reason that it has no physical indication (e.g., RS-232C) or clear visual indicator for orientation, and you get it wrong 50% of the time.

That's a crap connector implementation problem. If the connector is compliant with the spec, it will only go in one way. (Looking at you, Yubikey.)

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