Even USB-C is a nightmare. There’s 3.0, 3.1, and 3.2, which were rebranded as “3.2 Gen X” with some stupid stuff there as far as what speed it supports.
Then it can do DisplayPort as well. There used to be an HDMI alt mode too!
An Intel computer might have Thunderbolt over the same cable, and can send PCIe signals over the cable to plug in a graphics card or other devices.
Then there’s USB 4 which works like Thunderbolt but isn’t restricted to Intel devices.
Then there’s the extended power profile which lets you push 240 W through a USB C port.
For a while, the USB-C connector was on graphics cards as Virtualink, which was supposed to be a one-cable standardized solution to plugging in VR headsets. Except that no headsets used it.
Then there’s Nintendo. The Switch has a Type-C port, but does its own stupid thing for video, so it can’t work with a normal dock because it’s a freak.
So you pick up a random USB C cable and have no information on what it may be capable of, plug it into a port where you again don’t know the capabilities. Its speed may be anywhere between 1.5 MBit/s (USB 1.0 low speed) and 80 GBit/s (USB 4 2.0) and it may provide between 5 and 240 W of power.
Every charger has a different power output, and sometimes it leads to a stupid situation like the Dell 130 W laptop charger. In theory, 130 W is way more than what most phones will charge at. But it only offers that at I think 20 V, which my phone can’t take. So in practice, your phone will charge at the base 5W over it.
Dell also has a laptop dock for one of their laptops that uses TWO Type-C ports, for more gooderness or something, I don’t know. Meaning it will only fit that laptop with ports exactly that far apart.
The USB chaos does lead to fun discoveries, such as when I plugged a Chromecast with Google TV’s power port into a laptop dock and discovered that it actually supports USB inputs, which is cool.
And Logitech still can’t make a USB-C dongle for their mouse.
At least it’s not a bunch of proprietary barrel chargers. My parents have a whole box of orphaned chargers with oddly specific voltages from random devices.
mic_check_one_two@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 days ago
Pretty sure it was a reference to this problem specifically:
https://xkcd.com/927/
MotoAsh@lemmy.world 3 days ago
Yes I know the joke. My point is that it is only true for the developing front of engineering. Everyone is syill, in fact, standing on a mountain of well established and followed standards while debating the future.