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Ask HN: Explain the dearth of USB-C splitters?
2 points by innocentfelon 2818 days ago
Dear HN:

I finally took the plunge (actually, my water did onto my 2013 MacBook Air, courtesy of a United flight attendant), and the closest modern substitute I could find was a 2017 12” MacBook with one USBC port total.

It became quickly clear that I’d need a dongle or two. USB-C accessories are easy to find, but there are some glaring holes in the lineup, and short of making my own, I’m at a loss to explain the absence of certain obvious adapters:

One USBC male to Two USBC female. No such thing.

One USBC male to Two USBC any gender. No such thing.

USBC male to dual HDMI plus any way to power, no such thing.

Don’t get me wrong, I think these accessories would seem unnecessary and overpriced if they existed, but I can’t for the life of me figure out why nobody makes them.

Do I need to drop everything and start making them to satisfy a huge unmet demand, or is there a good reason nobody makes this stuff?

1 comments

> One USBC male to Two USBC female

What are you gonna do with the “alternate modes” (DisplayPort, Thunderbolt, etc)? You can indeed split the USB side into two ports by acting as a hub, but alternate modes can’t be split so easily.

What would you do with incoming power? Only one of the two female ports would be able to accept power from a charger.

> USBC male to dual HDMI plus any way to power, no such thing.

You can’t split the DisplayPort alternate mode into two separate outputs.