Comment on USB inventor explains why the connector was not designed to be reversible

Siegfried@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

• MeanEYE@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  I can bet you it’s incompetence. They failed upwards. Sure, protocol is great and universal, but connector is atrocious and it has nothing to do with cost. Few points in favor of this hypothesis:

  1. Plastic inside of the connector was initially black. Why chose hard to see color? Go with something easier to see;
  2. Connector is perfectly rectangular and only distinguishing feature they made hard to see. Don’t make ti symmetrical if it’s not reversible, basic design principle;
  3. Connector is perfectly rectangular making it difficult to insert. There’s a reason why most connectors have rounded corners, they are self-correcting, even TypeC does this;
  4. They made various different connector types but pushed for the only one with these issues. No one ever had doubts how type B or mini B or micro B go in.

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  • captain_aggravated@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    Initially, the plastic inside the connector was white. They started to use black to denote USB2.0 devices, and USB2.0 rapidly became the standard. They at least tried to do something similar with blue plastic with USB3.0.

    It’s basically the only example I can think of where the plug and socket are rotationally symmetrical without also being reversible. That’s the kind of thing where I ask “did you test this before you shipped it?” Thirty years later we’re still plagued by the damn thing.

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    • MeanEYE@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      Right you are. Completely forgot about that. That said, I don’t think USB1 was a standard for too long. If I remember correctly it went to 2.0 pretty fast.

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      • nilloc@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

        If you had Macs, USB 1 was around a lot earlier, and really only good for peripherals and HID for a long time. FireWire and external SCSI drives were necessary because USB 1 wasn’t even viable for anything beyond external floppy drives. USB2 was a boon to external drives and bigger thumb drives, but took a while to arrive at the time.

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  • sachabe@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    Also a male USB 2 plug fits perfectly into a RJ45 slot :-/ In my days of tech support, I’ve seen multiple people plugging their USB printer cable into the network slot of their computer and it’s a perfect fit so they were always convinced they didn’t do anything wrong… That’s clearly a design flaw while all other connectors have distinct sizes.

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    • MeanEYE@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      Never heard of people plugging USB into LAN, but now that you mention it they are the same size. Luckily all the contacts are shielded.

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      • chatokun@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

        I’ve done it myself when feeling the back of a pc and trying to get away without looking. I’ve been doing IT support since high school.

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    • PlutoniumAcid@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      Way back, joysticks had a DIN-25 connector that was identical to the MIDI connector.

      I blindly plugged my brand new MS Force Feedback joystick into the MIDI port behind my miditower (yes I’m that old) and watched the magic smoke rise out of the joystick. That was not a good day to learn about plugs. MIDI carries 50 volts or something. Stick wasn’t happy.

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      • bjoern_tantau@swg-empire.de ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

        Strange. I always thought they were the exact same port. Because most of the time you would need a sound card to plug in a joystick. And nowadays I can’t use my MS Force Feedback because all the USB adaptors don’t implement all of the MIDI stuff the joystick needs to run the force feedback.

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    • MrScottyTay@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      My girlfriend works in IT at a school so I asked if she’s encountered this too. She said “all the time, they’re right next to each other” she also added that a lot of people put their thin charging cables into the headphone jack breaking theor laptops. And that for some of them they “fit better” in that jack than the one it’s meant to go in.

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    • sverit@feddit.de ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      You mean USB Type-B, right?

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  • p03locke@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    No one ever had doubts how type B or mini B or micro B go in.

    I agree with most of your post, but micro B is a step too far. That fucking plug was always inserted with the following procedure:

    1. Try to plug it in.
    2. Flip the side and try to plug it in again.
    3. Flip it again because you had the right damn side the first time.

    Always, always, always.

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    • out@lemmynsfw.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      [deleted]

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      • jarfil@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

        Mini B was rated for something like 10x fewer insertion cycles, the retaining tabs would give out and the connector would fall off… or worse, twist and break the connector’s inner plastic bit.

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    • MeanEYE@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      Well, if nothing else it’s easier to than type A.

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  • Wogi@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    Hindsight is 20/20. You’re raising every issue with the original USB plug, then proceed to highlight how they addressed these issues going forward.

    You’re describing inexperience and calling it incompetence.

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    • Fedizen@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      AFAIK the real predecessor to USB was Serial cables and those were an absolute shit show. USB set out to create a more usable interface with a lower profile and cheaper cost. In many ways the minor flaws in USB becoming common gripes is USB becoming a victim of USB’s success.

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      • Dultas@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

        At least serial cables weren’t symmetric, although just barely. AT and PS/2 cables (or any DIN) were much more of a pain for me to plug in blind.

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    • deaf_fish@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      I don’t even know that I would call it inexperience. I just think a major attempt at the first pass was selling the idea of USB. You can design a perfect cable, plug, and protocol, it doesn’t mean anyone will use it. Most investors don’t know much about the technical details of a product. They do, however, understand the price. If you’re trying to make a difference in the world, you don’t always get to do it with style and quality.

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• NewPerspective@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  New question: why did it have rotational symmetry?

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  • fluxion@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    Because fuck you that’s why

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    • bingbong@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      New question: Fuck me? 🥺

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  • ook_the_librarian@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    Cheaper. Anything other questions?

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  • RagingRobot@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    Oversight

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• some_guy@lemmy.sdf.org ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  Considering the much higher cost of production then vs now, it makes complete sense. The economy of scale took care of that problem with time.

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