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USB-C-Feature

There's an former XKCD comic that brilliantly captures the difficulty of creating a unmarried unified standard to control all device interactions or capabilities. It's not an entirely impossible goal–USB-A has dominated the market for keyboards, mice, pollex drives, and a number of other peripherals for many years–simply the larger the scope of the project, the more difficult it is to bring every device nether the same roof.

In a recent blog post, Marco Arment–whose piece of work we've covered in various articles earlier–argues USB-C is effectively chasing an impossible dream with its starry-eyed goal of unifying nigh every other standard into a single diminutive cable. And based on what we've seen in the market only so far, he's got a point.

standards

Comic by xkcd

When Intel appear USB-C would bear Thunderbolt iii, it seemed like a great match-upwardly. USB-C had already positioned itself every bit a cable and plug standard capable of conveying everything from power to video, and Thunderbolt 3 had bandwidth and depression-latency operation capabilities that no other standard has however matched. But the reality of USB-C (USB Type-C if we're being technically right) is that the various cable standards have created a nightmare of cables and products with widely varying compatibility and adequacy, all wrapped upwards in the same concrete cables. If having to buy a bunch of standard-specific cables is bad, needing a bunch of standard-specific cables that all look identical is worse. As Arment writes:

USB-C commonly transfers information by the USB protocol, merely information technology too supports Thunderbolt… sometimes. The 12-inch MacBook has a USB-C port, only information technology doesn't support Thunderbolt at all. All other modern MacBook models support Thunderbolt over their USB-C ports… only if yous have a thirteen-inch model, and it has a Affect Bar, then the right-side ports don't have full Thunderbolt bandwidth.

If you bought a USB-C cable, information technology might back up Thunderbolt, or information technology might not. There'due south no way to tell by looking at it… While a broad multifariousness of USB-C dongles are available, most utilise the same handful of unreliable, mediocre chips within. Some USB-A dongles make Wi-Fi drop on MacBook Pros. Some USB-A devices don't work properly when adapted to USB-C, or but work in certain ports. Some devices simply work when plugged directly into a laptop'due south precious few USB-C ports, rather than any hubs or dongles. And reliable HDMI output seems nearly incommunicable in practice.

Issues like this are why Google Pixel engineer Benson Leung created his own database of cables he'd tested, to make up one's mind which of them were compatible with USB-C as properly implemented and which were non. The corporeality of publicity his efforts earned, and the occasionally cataclysmic failure of the products he tested, weren't unusual but par for the course. The fundamental problem is this: There are an enormous number of types of USB-C cables, and their capabilities and features aren't stacked straight on top of one another.

Earlier USB-C, backwards compatibility was much simpler. In that location were certain border cases–a device that used USB 3.0 for power, for example, might need a compatible cable and a genuine USB 3.0 port, though a handful of devices with USB 2.0 ports delivered ability to them via a specific "high power" port. Simply with USB-C, your cablevision might support power delivery, but not Thunderbolt. It might back up USB Type-C, but not USB 3.one. There are four different Alternate Modes: HDMI, DisplayPort, MHL, and Thunderbolt, and a cablevision supporting one of them doesn't mean it supports the others. In that location's a matrix on Wikipedia that shows the differences:

That's just for cables that support Alternate Modes, mind y'all–and non all do. As Arment details, compatibility between dissimilar products and standards ranges from functional to terrible.

Too Many Cooks in the Kitchen

Every standard has to strike a residual between price, capability, and flexibility. In theory, the USB-IF could've mandated one USB-C standard in which every single feature was supported at every level. The trouble with this option is that information technology would've kept cable prices high.

Building a USB-C cable that tin can handle delivering upward to 100W of power and supports Thunderbolt 3 is more expensive than a cable that supports USB two.0 transfer speeds and charging via USB-C. Cable lengths would have had to exist much shorter, since delivering that kind of capability over a long wire is much more difficult than the USB 2.0 option. And taking a step similar this would've made it much less likely companies would adopt the standard, since few mobile phones ship with USB 3.0 chipsets (for example), and companies would've been much less interested in being forced to utilise a solution that consumes much more power than traditional USB. Being forced to parcel a cable with a agglomeration of back up for features your phone doesn't employ isn't going to win OEM support, either.

Simply therein lies the problem. In this case, the flexibility of USB-C actually makes it less likely that we'll see the port take over everything. Information technology's confusing, information technology's vastly more complex than any previous USB standard, and information technology'south not doing consumers any particular favors.