Submitted 2 months ago by SouravSatvaya@lemmy.world to technology@lemmy.world
https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/4206aabd-ca44-4785-bdcd-a1ad4153007a.jpeg
It gets even better, each function of the port also needs proper support from the cable. Often cables do not support the full spec of usb to cut costs.
While the symbols in the post are often put on computers, for usb cables this is seldom done (only a few brands do).
Source: had to find a cable that supports both DP and PD to connect a portable external monitor after I lost the original cable. (1/9 cables worked)
For that portable monitor, you should just need a cable with USB-C plugs on both ends which supports USB 3.0+ (could be branded as SuperSpeed, 5Gbps, etc). Nothing more complicated than that.
The baseline for a cable with USB-C on both ends should be PD up to 60W (3A) and data transfers at USB 2.0 (480Mbps) speeds.
Most cables stick with that baseline because it’s enough to charge phones and most people won’t use USB-C cables for anything else. Omitting the extra capabilities lets cables be not only cheaper but also longer and thinner.
DisplayPort support uses the same extra data pins that are needed for USB 3.0 data transfers, so in terms of cable support they should be equivalent. There also exist higher-power cables rated for 100W or 240W but there’s no way a portable monitor would need that.
Luckily, all new PC seem to choose Thunderbolt over only alt mode, which makes stuff more easy, since they have the flash on the cable (but are also more extensive, I gear
Yeah, it’s gotten so bad I eventually ordered a USB cable checker to figure out what any given USB cable is capable of (and to see if the cable has gone flaky, which seems to happen a lot). I haven’t received it yet so I don’t know if I can recommend this item, but … gosh darn you sure need something like this.
Sometimes people want to charge their phone in an outlet 10 feet from their airport seat.
Sometimes people want to transmit 8k video.
It’s not physically possible to do both tasks with the same cable.
But because USB is a flexible standard, we don’t have two incompatible specs to do the same thing. So when you get out of the airport and to your meeting, you can actually plug your phone into the meeting room projector for your business presentation.
What is the difference between USA and USB?
One connects to all your devices and accesses your data, the other is a hardware standard.
One gives you power, the other does everything it can to make sure you are never do.
OIL
exept when manufacturer don’t give a fuck and print whatever or nothing next to the port. like always
TL;DR: The USB Implementers Forum is ridiculously bad at naming, symbols and communication in general. (And they don’t seriously enforce any of this anyway, so don’t even bother learning it.)
This is the correct answer; after the whole USB 3.2 Gen 2 2x2 (hands of blue) bullshit, I wouldn’t trust that team to name a park bench in the middle of the desert. Let alone something important and universally used.
It basically gets long every few years. At this rate, it’ll turn into an Amazon listing.
USB 3.5 Gen 3 2x2 20 Gbit Two-Sided DP PD USB 3 USB 2 USB 1 Compatible
We could have gone for already proven and tested conventions like the resistor color codes and have a unique distinguishable icon for each features to attach when needed (like thunder icon for high power). But nope, we got this USB 3.2 Gen 4 2x2 Hyper Turbocharged World Champions and Knuckles Platinum Edition bs instead.
The bench is called “Bench” (legacy name, it’s actually more like a concrete slab, but at the time it was more benchy that the previous bench which was just a pile of sand).
the whole USB 3.2 Gen 2 2x2 (hands of blue) bullshit
If you’re not trying to wire your own USB port you can just use the recommended name “USB SuperSpeed 20 Gbps”. You don’t have to be confused by technical names if you don’t want to be.
The real bullshit is between your ears–you and only you can fix it.
“Just plug your device in, you little bitch”
They are not bad at this. You are bad at understanding it.
Don’t get mad when you could instead learn something.
There is some stuff to be learned, but especially with USB-C I’d say the vast majority are not labeled. There’s even some devices charged with USB C that can’t be charged with a PD charger and need an A to C cable. Phones are a great example where you have to look up the specs to know data transfer capabilities. Additionally they renamed the USB 3.0 standard which has been established for over a decade to USB 3.1 Gen 1 which is completely unnecessary and just serves to confuse. The standard was largely understandable with USB 3.0 generally being blue or at least a color other than black and on decently modern devices USB 2.0 would be black. With USB-C indication has just about gone out the window and what used to be a very simple to understand standard has now become nearly impossible to understand without having researched every device and cable you interact with.
They are not bad at this. You are bad at understanding it.
I work with this stuff, and I do understand it. Some of my colleagues are actively participating in USB-IF workgroups, although not the ones responsible for naming end user facing things. They come to me for advice when those other workgroups changed some names retroactively again and we need to make sure we are still backwards compatible with things that rely on those names and that we are not confusing our customers more than necessary.
That is why I am very confident in claiming those naming schemes are bad.
“don’t even bother learning it” is my advice for normal end users, and I do stand by it.
But the names are not hard if you bother to learn them.
Never said it is hard.
It is more complex than it needs to be.
It is internally inconsistent.
Names get changed retroactively with new spec releases.
None of that is hard to learn, just not worth the effort.
LOL, yeah, manufacturers don’t follow this at all.
Last I looked, these (and the “blue plastic for USB 3” convention) weren’t mandated by the spec. So it’s not that they’re violating the spec, but that they’re optional.
And that’s the real issue with the USB spec, almost everything is optional. This would be fine if cables were largely interchangeable, but they’re not.
What they should have are a handful of very well-defined tiers. Cables should maybe have three (basic, mid-range, high end), and ports can have a couple more.
The USB-C standard and particularly the USB PD (power delivery) is so complex it almost feels comical.
The PD standard document (freely available on usb.org) is over 800 pages long and features a lengthy part about the role of the cable alone which is mostly hidden from the user. Here’s a short video about this issue: www.youtube.com/watch?v=6bZ0y9G-4Pc
Do you regularly read highly technical whitepapers? I don’t see how an 800 page document is comical for something that works so well.
The USB standards are just… Comically overcomplicated. And almost everything about it is optional. They need a full revamp, making it simpler and mandatory on all future ports, devices and cables.
But they won’t do that, will they.
Almost everything about it needs to be optional because sometimes USB is used to charge some cheap battery powered thing and sometimes it’s used to make a backup of a harddrive and sometimes it’s charging my laptop with enough power for it to be rendering video but still have a net charge increase to the battery while also providing Ethernet, video output, and keyboard/mouse input over the same one port.
There should be a way to make it simpler.
Idk, something like “for USB 4 you NEED all of these”.
Or maybe USB 4 with levels like bronze, silver, etc.
Or make displaying data rate, display and charging capabilities all mandatory on all ports…
I’m not sure what, but “it’s a USB port; look in the manual and if you’re lucky you might learn what it does exactly” ain’t it.
Maybe optional opt out? Like to say you are usb-4 you have to have this format and support all of these features. Other you are USB 4 W/O x,y,z,PD,Video,etc. I also think PD levels should be labeled on power sources and sinks.
except its just one consortium who has the holy grail universal standard making things needlessly convoluted on purpose.
I miss FireWire, too.
I remember having a FireWire in one of the family desktops when I was a kid. Can’t remember what we might have used it for, though.
It resides in the same vague memory hole as the Zip drive that we had.
Now that was a peripheral protocol standard.
sigh
Thank God there’s a standard for USB. And another one. And another one. And another one. And another one. And another one. And another one. And another one. And another one. And another one. And another one. And another one…
I have never seen one with SS, but maybe they removed that part in Germany.
So the SS Anne from Pokémon was a Nazi cruise ship?
🌎👨🚀🔫👨🚀
Not in Germany, they renamed it to MS Anne.
You mean the MS Anne
I looked at two Dell laptops and a Geekom mini PC, all bought in Germany, and they all have the SS symbol.
I see them on the back of full size computer cases and on docks. They will often be one SS port on the top. I had no idea what it meant before now.
My laptop has two USBC ports. No logos of any kind. They are Thunderbolt 4. ¯_(ツ)_/¯
Here, you’ve lost an arm: \\
If you’re trying to get Lemmy to print the backslash, you need to make it a double backslash since backslash is an “escape” character that means “ignore any special formatting meaning of the next character” (among other meanings)
Reddit was the same exact way. I don’t know how people are messing it up here too.
USB = Unintelligible Symbols of Bewilderment
Also don’t forget the dubious AliExpress devices that have all these symbols, no data lines, Vcc at 12V and ground attached to a loose M8 nut.
I guess they could have a USB certification body, kinda like UL is for wall power devices, and require that a device have an certification ID number on it that you could look up in their online database to qualify. I mean, you could forge a fake number that doesn’t map to anything, but I feel like that’s a higher bar than just throwing a USB symbol on there. Like, you gotta know that you’re doing something fraudulent in that case.
investigates
Huh.
Apparently UL does certify USB devices. I have no idea how to tell whether a UL-marked device of a given age is certified to do what from the logo alone, though. I guess you could look it up with UL.
www.ul.com/services/ul-taiwan-usb-test-lab
I bet that only my high-power USB chargers have it, though. Honestly, I didn’t even know that they covered those, wouldn’t have looked for a UL mark.
investigates
Well, my Logitech F710 gamepad does have a UL mark. That’s some proprietary wireless standard, uses AA batteries. Dunno whether they certified it for wireless or power safety or whatever.
looks further
I have a wired USB gamepad with a bunch of Chinese characters, the URL “www.izdtech.com”, and no UL mark.
I have a wired/wireless USB 8Bitdo gamepad with a CE mark, USB symbols, and no UL mark (I understand that CE doesn’t work like UL. It doesn’t indicate that any independent organization has tested the device, just is a concise way to state that the device manufacturer states that the device conforms to some set of standards).
I have a 100W USB PD “Nekteck” charger with a UL mark and some ID number that looks to be associated with that, no CE mark, an FCC mark that I assume is related to RF interference compliance, an enormous USB standard mark with the 100 watt capability listed, and some sort of mark with a box inside another box that I don’t recognize.
I have an SIIG USB audio interface that has no USB labels, a CE mark, an FCC mark, and no UL mark.
I have a USB-powered audio mixer that has no USB labels, no FCC mark, no UL mark and a CE mark.
I have a laptop USB charger that has no USB labels, a CE mark, multiple UL marks, one of which appears to be in some sort of teardrop-looking thing, some “UK CA” mark that I assume is some kind of UK regulatory body. It’s got that same mysterious “box in a box” mark that I saw before, “VI” in a circle, a picture of a house, some “NYCE” mark, and a “NOM” mark.
I bet that most people have basically no idea what any of this means. I probably know what more of it means than the average person, but definitely not enough to extract a whole lot of information from this. And all of these have a different set of marks; there is no least-common-denominator mark.
Every device I have just has a couple of blue ones and a couple of black ones, perhaps some orange ones and some USB-C ports, and good luck figuring out what they all can do. No symbols anywhere.
It’s cool, the colors are just for aesthetics. Internally they’re all connected to the same USB controller chip anyway.
If they’re following the standard, which they often do but sometimes don’t, white indicates 2.0 and blue indicates 3.x. I think there are more but I don’t remember the other colours.
the colors are just for aesthetics.
Blue is a convention to indicate USB 3. Of course, not everyone actually implements that, and USB-C ports don’t, as far as I know, do that at all, just USB-A.
My current desktop does both – the case has USB ports on the top that come off a USB header from the motherboard, which have a simple number “3.0” pointing at its USB-A ports in front, but uses black plastic for them. The motherboard’s USB connectors in back use the “blue plastic” convention on its USB-A ports.
Additionally, USB 3.0, 3.1 and 3.2 labels provide no information on the speed. Rather, “Gen 1” means 5Gb/s, Gen 2 means 10 and Gen 2×2 menas 20Gb/s. These “Gen” labels are seldom found on products however.
So USB 3.2 Gen 1 is 5Gb/s while USB 3.1 Gen 2 is 10Gb/s
Most devices don’t have theese symbols and basically say fuck you unless you know how to find the specs
I just love that in a world with Power Delivery (PD) they decided that the best way to indicate Display Port (DP) was to have an ambiguous symbol involving a P and a D.
Meanwhile my thumb drive:
The best I can do is 20Mbps with the curve xy = 1
USB keeps changing their own standard every 2 years why bother learning it.
SuperSpeed is not a “legacy” name.
It’s the name of a transfer rate.
I do not trust the maker of this infographic if they cannot understand some basic facts.
Who the hell makes a type-c port that only runs at 2.0 speeds?
A small correction on USB PD… It’s not just USB PD that supports power delivery: Standard USB from way back in 1.0 also supports power delivery to devices as standard, but it’s only up to 100mA in USB 1.0, 500mA in USB 2.0 and 900mA in USB 3.0, all at 5V.
USB PD is a dedicated power delivery USB protocol that supports much higher currents (up to 5A) as well as dynamically configured voltages (so, not fixed as 5V anymore) though it’s all negotiated so your 5V-only phones isn’t going to just get burned with 20V from a USB PD charger.
Since Power = Current * Voltage USB PD can put out quite a lot of power for supporting devices (the maximum depending on what both sides support), which means much faster transmission of power via USB which for example means faster charging of devices via USB with USB PD.
Anyways, the point being that even really old USB 1.0 can charge your device (just really really slow), and that standard charging speed dies go up with each new Standard USB generation (so a standard USB 3.1 charger without USB PD support can still push a nice amount of power down the line to charge devices), but with USB PD things really take off though only up to a shared maximum that both sides support.
“Universal”
I think that maybe having two similar lightning bolt symbols that mean different thungs wasn’t the best design decision that the USB guys could have made.
Handy guide, but this whole USB situation is a cock-up, since it needs the freakin guide in the first place.
That meme sucked
Came here disappointed to see no one said anything about Black D inside white P
USB in 1996: Let’s make one connector that handles everything
USB in 2024: Let’s make one connector do thirty different incompatible combinations of things
The standard might be complicated if you want the specifics, but for everyday use it’s incredibly simple, and I love it. The number of times I needed this information is 1, even though most of my devices, including an external monitor, are USB-C.
Why not label the ports and cables with:
10Gb/s 2.1Amps 1080p at 60hz
It’s future proof and doesn’t need a decoder manual other than basic literacy. It can be in whatever language the fucking keyboard is. If you want to be redundant but even more clear:
Universal Serial Bus -> (this hole right here) Speed: 40Gb/s Power: 2.4Amps Audio/Video: 4K at 120Hz or 8K at 30Hz
tobogganablaze@lemmus.org 2 months ago
You won’t find these symbols on most devices though (certainly not on any macbook as the picture suggests).
Deceptichum@quokk.au 2 months ago
By removing the symbols they were able to shave the case down 0.0003nm, making it the thinnest and lightest laptop ever.
peetabix@lemmy.world 2 months ago
How brave!
ForgotAboutDre@lemmy.world 2 months ago
You know it’s a thunderbolt connection on a MacBook. They stopped using the USB symbol when they used the usb for thunderbolt and stopped using the mini display port.
idunnololz@lemmy.world 2 months ago
If they etched the symbol they could have reduced the weight of the laptop by 0.003g making it even better
LesserAbe@lemmy.world 2 months ago
I didn’t take the image to be showing a macbook, it could just as easily be my computer (Dell XPS) or probably many others.
doctortran@lemm.ee 2 months ago
It could be, but combine the color looking very much like Apple’s space grey, the slimness of it, particularly how slim the lid is versus the body, and what looks like the MacBook’s classic black, rounded rubber stoppers on the bottom, I think it’s safe to say that’s meant to be an MacBook.
Magister@lemmy.world 2 months ago
True, my latest Dell laptop has 3 “usb-c shaped ports”, there is 0 symbol anywhere close to them or the underside cover, you’re on your own as to what it supports, you have to find the doc online somewhere I guess.
tal@lemmy.today 2 months ago
I discovered that my Thinkpad apparently supports charging from all of the (unlabeled) USB-C ports after I inadvertently started it charging from my cell phone’s (unlabled) USB-C port.
subtext@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Tbf my work Dell Latitude 5440 has a USB A with a SS5, an A with a SS5 and charging indicator, a C with a thunderbolt indicator, and a C with a battery and a thunderbolt indicator.
So at least some of their laptops do in fact have the indicators similar-ish enough to what the infographic shows.
hibsen@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Why would you need them on a MacBook? They’re always Thunderbolt.
Blue_Morpho@lemmy.world 2 months ago
No they aren’t. Only some are.
support.apple.com/en-us/109523
tal@lemmy.today 2 months ago
With some devices, I assume that they’re trying to save a bit of money.
With the MBP, I’m pretty sure that they just don’t want to disrupt the designer’s vision of the aesthetic.
Chev@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Have the thunderbolt symbol on my HP Laptop.