Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by layer8 946 days ago
PCs still come with half a dozen or more USB-A ports and only a single USB-C port (if you're lucky). Dongles, flash drives, webcams and the like are still prominently USB-A. Logitech's lineup is still mostly USB-A. I'm not sure that there will even be a full transition to USB-C, but if so, it will take quite a while.
3 comments

PC motherboards are often like a study in the history of PC motherboards with vestigial functionality that hasn’t been in widespread use in decades. That’s a fairly poor indicator, and I think it largely happens to buffer the feature sheet, take advantage of cheap pricing on components over time, and copy and paste functionality in their design software. It’s over. The only place for a USB-A is on an aftermarket USB hub. That’s ok. It was nice while it lasted, but it’s time to move on.
There is no incentive for manufacturers to use USB-C over USB-A for applications that neither use charging nor need above-USB-2.0 speeds. A lot of peripherals and gadgets fall into that category. Another factor is the limitation on available PCIe lanes depending on chipset. If you can provide 8-10 USB ports, you won’t be able to give all of them USB 3 speeds, and having USB-C ports with different speeds on the same device would be weird, as there is no color-coding mechanism like with USB-A.
I bought a new machine last week (Intel NUC 13 Extreme). It has three Type-C ports of which two are Thundebolt. We are slowly getting somewhere. Meanwhile my phones, displays, keyboards, all use Type-C connectors. Though some came with a USB-C to A converter.

We are slowly getting there.

Counterpoint: I also bought a new machine, a couple of weeks ago (Optiplex 7010 Micro). It has six USB A ports, four of them USB 3 and two of them USB 2 only, with the option to add a single USB-C port (or instead an extra DP or HDMI or even VGA or serial port); if you add that option, that USB-C port (which has DP alt mode) can be used to power the computer (instead of using the barrel plug), which is nice.

Very high end devices might have more than a single USB-C port (which is probably your case, given the "extreme" in the name), and these ports might even be Thunderbolt or USB4, but that's still rare. In my opinion, we are still in the USB-C equivalent of the "only two USB 2 ports, if you want more get a PCI add-on card" phase we had in the serial/parallel/PS2 to USB migration back in the day.

I just bought a new device that came with a USB-A to USB-B cable!!!! the horror!! Makes sense, as it pretty much functions like a printer, only subtractive instead of additive process. Then it has Bluetooth instead of WiFi for wireless!?!?