The Atlantic writes about what we’ve all known for some time, the poor state of the USB-C ecosystem in the marketplace.
Can we talk about the cables in our lives? I’ll start: I have a circa-2020 iPhone, which features a Lightning port for charging. My monitor, laptop, and e-reader all have ports for USB-C, the connector that looks like a pill; my car has USB-A, which is the older, rectangular design that is somehow always upside-down.
This chaos was supposed to end, with USB-C as our savior. The European Union even passed a law to make that port the charging standard by the end of this year.
This situation is worsened by the fact that many manufacturers now ship devices without a charging brick. Some, like Apple, say they do this for ecological reasons. But more cost-conscious manufacturers do so to save money, and also because forgoing a brick allows them to avoid certifications related to AC power plugs, which vary around the world.
Hope persists that someday, eventually, this hell can be escaped—and that, given sufficient standardization, regulatory intervention, and consumer demand, a winner will emerge in the battle of the plugs. But the dream of having a universal cable is always and forever doomed, because cables, like humankind itself, are subject to the curse of time.
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How I wish the physical connector selected for this fallowing attempt at standardization was anything but the usb-c connector.
Packing so many pins into such a small space, and making very poor use of the available surface area as well, has resulted in so many failing cables. That the connector has no mechanical patching system means that any cable more than a few months old begins to just limply side out of three device it should be powering.
Of all the connector types I've used over the years, usb-c is the first to truly disappoint. I'd rather we were using British naval connectors than this stunted little connector that can't.
How I wish the physical connector selected for this fallowing attempt at standardization was anything but the usb-c connector.
Packing so many pins into such a small space, and making very poor use of the available surface area as well, has resulted in so many failing cables. That the connector has no mechanical patching system means that any cable more than a few months old begins to just limply side out of three device it should be powering.
Of all the connector types I've used over the years, usb-c is the first to truly disappoint. I'd rather we were using British naval connectors than this stunted little connector that can't.