They had an opportunity to resolve this with usb4, it's practically a worthless feature set because things remained optional. The U is for universal and they forgot that, there's no excuses it's just gross incompetence.

[–] echo64@lemmy.world 3 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Again, if usbc4 wasn't optional then people would just not make anything to support it.

There's no incompetence, they are doing this for a reason. You just don't like it.

[–] Toes@ani.social 9 points 8 months ago (2 children)

I believe you're not understanding my point, as I never suggested usb4 to be mandatory. Perhaps you're not familiar with the problem at hand?

Here's the problem.

Try to place yourself in the mindset of someone frustrated by potentially wasting thousands of dollars because the equipment you bought, despite the same connector and matching version just won't work by design. As there's not always a clear or trustworthy way to confirm it without just trying it.

You can have 3 computers with 3 USBC ports among them and a USBC device that only works in one of those computers. Even though each of these computers have a USB3 usbc port. And the device is marketed as USB3.

This is because the device manufacturer opted to use an optional feature of USB3 that the computer manufacturer elected to opt out of. Additionally the standards body that dictates this, changed the names of the subversions several times. To accurately know if something will work you need to compare the technical specifications of the usb chipset against the device you're using and keep in mind that the names of features could be inaccurate or outdated. Wow right?

Now this problem is further compounded because we have a new USB4 standard that still continues to not support some of these USB3 devices because a required feature is still optional to implement.

Now we have multiple generations of electronics that we cannot trust will work reliably with one another, even with a connector that is marketed as being universal. This is a major design regression.

Historically a great deal of effort went into insuring compatibility to create a connector you can trust. Devices that do not use the USBC connector but instead use the traditional USBA connector can be trusted to work in some capacity in any configuration of USB 1, 2 and 3 in circumstances that don't exceed the power limitations of the chipset.

Do note that USB1 and 2 are almost nothing alike and it was quite a feat to keep interoperability between them. It's senseless that they push a newer standard that still falls short of rectifying this problem in its entirety.

This video also explores this problem better than I've described it.

https://youtu.be/C6aCCp-Umcw

[–] echo64@lemmy.world 2 points 8 months ago

No. I understand your point entirely. You don't seem to acknowledge or understand mine. What do you think I'm saying?

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