Alt text
xkcd 927 - How Standards Proliferate
(See: A/C chargers, character encodings, instant messaging, etc.)
Situation: There are 14 competing standards.
Cueball and Ponytail stand facing each other:
Cueball: 14?! Ridiculous! We need to develop one universal standard that covers everyone’s use cases.
Ponytail: Yeah!
Soon: Situation: we did it our standard beat all the other ones and is universal yay :D
The suspiciously cheap pile of out of spec USB-C cables (only usb 2 or can only transfer power):
“one standard”
TBF, charge-only USB-C cables are great for data security when needing to charge your device from a public / untrusted port.
I thought USB 2.0 Type C cables were covered by the spec also, but I honestly have no idea.
The issue with charge-only USB cables (in my eyes) is there’s no distinguishing color coding or symbol on the connector to easily distinguish them from normal data cables (unlike USB-A cable norms). The same applies for USB-2 compatibility - the inclusion of USB 2 connectors as an option is nice, but because they aren’t distinguished in form factor, color coding, or labelling, you get a lot of cables that “trick” you into thinking they are more capable than they are.
I’ve had a lot of bad experience with misrepresented cables through my repair and IT work in the past, so I’m a bit frustrated is all (Have to test every goddamn cable that I come across before serious usage).
Oh, this 100%!
I ended up buying a cable tester in order to sort, identify and validate the rats nest of USB C cables we’ve accumulated.
Once identified, I use a little bit of coloured electrical tape around one end to keep them categorised. I originally wanted to use silicone o-rings or mini clips for this purpose - but didn’t have any luck finding something suitable.
It shouldn’t have to be like this, manufacturers should clearly label both transfer and power delivery capabilities on the cables themselves.
For this reason alone, I’d give plenty of kudos to LTT for doing just this with their recently launched line of True Spec cables. Every cable moving forward should be produced to this same standard.
Situation after: there is a single universal standard that everybody adopts, it’s divided in 3 dimensions of 24 incompatible sub-standards everybody mashes at random.
