[Roritharr]

I'm kinda disapointed about the whole Type-C scenario.

Now when you've got a Type-C Port, you just don't know what it can do. It could be anything from a USB 2 Port, up to a USB 3.1 + 20A Power + Thunderbolt Port.

You can't see this from looking at it, and Spec Sheets today have a problem of listing the version numbers of HDMI and DisplayPort Ports, I don't see them suddenly becoming very concise about this.

The promise of USB has always been one of standardization. If I knew my mothers notebook is from around somewhere after 2008, if it has a USB Port, it will be USB 2 compatible.

In 2020 i won't be able to know if the monitor i recommend my mother will be able to connect to her laptop over the USB Type-C Port or not, or if it will run at full resolution or not, if it will be able to charge the notebook over it, or not... etc.

Its just a mess. If you make a standard, please make it a standard, not a pick and choose affair where the result ist just confusion.

[ghshephard]

Even today - a USB 2 port might not have enough juice to power your hard drive, so we're already in a state of "non standardization."

I look very, very forward to the day when a USB C port means that I have a very strong chance of getting 15 watts for my tablet/phone from any vendor - and the sooner apple adopts USB C for their iphones, the better.

[bdcravens]

It even happens at the cable level. I've had a couple of devices (Galaxy S3, Mophie) that required me to the use the proper higher-quality cable, despite being standard micro USB.

[digi_owl]

If i recall correctly, that's because the basic signaling for USB charging is resistance based. Too high a resistance on the wire, and it may heat up (even melt the plastic wrapping) if they try to draw more than the default 500mA USB amount.

[rz2k]

I believe that higher currents are negotiated with digital signalling. Does that allow for the two ends talk to each other to determine the performance of a cable between them? The Apple lightning cables themselves include a chip.

Anyway, an interesting thing about USB C (and maybe 3.0, too) is that it can also negotiate 12 or 20 volts and even up to 5 amps. For the same wattage, a higher voltage will heat the cable less.

[digi_owl]

Its a bit of both.

If the data pins are shorted facing the device (so that the device detects its own outgoing signal on the incoming pin) it will consider the port a dumb charger port and attempt to charge from it based on the cable quality.

If there is a proper port response, and the port claim to be a charging port, the device can ask for more than 500mA in increments of 100mA. There will be limitations depending on there being ongoing data traffic or not.

[kevin_thibedeau]

USB 3 cables identify their current capacity through resistive values on the ID pin. Voltage negotiation is also permitted for USB 2 although I doubt it's used much outside of niche products designed to work together.

[FreakyT]

I disagree, provided that the standard provides for some degree of backwards compatibility.

I think it's great how a USB 3.0 drive will still work on a USB 1.0 computer from 1999. Sure, it'll run slower, but it'll work, and even without an adapter! With Apple's previous various high-speed ports (Firewire 400, Firewire 800, Thunderbolt), they have no backwards compatibility -- from FW 400 -> 800 you could use an adaptor, but for Thunderbolt you're out of luck completely.

[Roritharr]

The point is, there will be Plug-Compatible Devices that are not Backwards compatible, as evidenced by the Thunderbolt Port switching to it.

Of course other Devices will follow that come without external power supplies and other features that don't allow for graceful degradation. Thats my point.

If it all were backwards compatible as it has been until now, things would be great, but that door has been shut now.

[tw04]

Just so we're clear, you'd rather have to carry around 10 different dongles just so you can know, visually, what a port is capable of?

I'm sorry - when I buy the laptop, I look at what the port can do, and I remember it. If I'm in a meeting and I have to use someone else's, I ask if they know. If they don't, I try it, and if it doesn't work, we move on.

I can't come up with any scenario in which this is a bad thing, outside of sheer laziness or poor planning.

[wilsynet]

But he's OK that you can't tell USB v1 from USB v2 visually. Somehow he's able to discern or recall the date of manufacture but won't be able to remember that it's a Thunderbolt port.

[DannoHung]

They probably should come up with some way to simply mark things though, so you can easily tell by looking at what you're plugging in that everything is good.

[yellowapple]

Many USB 3.0 ports have blue inner connectors to indicate that they're 3.0 ports, and some USB ports will have yellow connectors instead to indicate a variety of things (from better charging rate to supplying power even when the host device is powered off). I think the logical extension of this would be resistor-style color code bands to indicate different sets of functionality (yellow for Thunderbolt, red for charging, etc.).

[ZenoArrow]

> Of course other Devices will follow that come without external power supplies and other features that don't allow for graceful degradation. Thats my point.

I don't get your point.

The Type C connector will support USB 3.1, which AFAIK is backwards compatible with older versions of USB.

The Type C connector will also support Thunderbolt 3 (and the datatypes that Thunderbolt supports, aside from perhaps DisplayPort 1.3).

Support for the protocols is done at the chipset level. All Type C connectors in Intel computers will support everything that the Type C currently supports, as the support is built in to the Alpine Ridge chipset. Other device makers will support all the USB 3.1 stuff at a minimum out of the gate, and potentially support Thunderbolt down the road also.

Where exactly is the backwards compatibility issue? Do you mean forward compatibility?

[FreakyT]

Ah, I see your point. At the same time, though, there do exist some USB 3.0 peripherals that require of a lot of bandwidth (like docking stations), that, while theoretically backwards compatible, wouldn't actually work with a USB 1.0 port in practice due to bandwidth constraints.

[jawngee]

    from FW 400 -> 800 you could use an adaptor, 
    but for Thunderbolt you're out of luck completely

No you aren't:

http://www.amazon.com/Apple-Thunderbolt-to-FireWire-Adapter/...

[mikeash]

That only works in one direction. You can use it to connect FireWire devices to a computer with Thunderbolt, but you can't use it to connect Thunderbolt devices to a computer with FireWire.

Contrast with USB. I can go out and buy a USB storage device brand new off the shelf in 2015, plug it into an iMac from 1998, and it will work. It will be slow but it will work out of the box.

[ssharp]

I don't have a thunderbolt device yet, but I wouldn't expect the behavior you're talking about. Being able to connect my old firewire devices might be nice, but I wouldn't expect to be able to use new devices on an old port.

[mikeash]

There's no reason to expect it. But USB does it anyway, and it's really nice to know that I can buy USB 3 devices and use them with my USB 2 computers as long as I don't need top performance.

[jawngee]

He said he was "out of luck completely". He's not.

[mikeash]

That comment is entirely about using newer peripherals with older computers. He is.

[atonse]

The logic is actually simple:

If you're trying to plug in a USB device, just plug it in. It'll work, regardless of whether it's TB 3 or just plain USB 3. (update: this is probably for 99% of cases since USB is much more common than TB)

If you're trying to plug in a thunderbolt 3 device, it's very likely you know if you have thunderbolt.

[izacus]

Will I? I've seen software developers (tech people!) return their MacBooks to Apple store because they wouldn't drive a Thunderbolt display (with the issue of course being that older MBs had only DisplayPort output, which is physically identical).

This will cause confusion (especially with added confusion around DisplayPort standard support over the USB connector) and it's unfortunate that a new connectivity standard is a regression.

[atonse]

Yea this is a valid point, but since TB 1 and 2 carried DisplayPort signals, there's no technical reason why Apple had to limit TB displays to just TB ports (that I'm aware of... happy to be corrected). They should've just worked.

But these ports won't have that problem. Although to be honest, the new Macbook has a pure USB3 port and not TB3 :) So Macbook owners might still have that issue. Dammit Apple!

[itchyouch]

I'd imagine that Apple has learned from history that its proprietary & non-widespread (niche) connectors have not seen the type of industry-wide adoption that they would have liked to have seen (a la ADC, firewire, iPhone 1st gen, etc) regardless of technical merit. They have diverted from industry standards when the current off-the-shelf components did not necessarily meet their design desires/criteria.

I'm guessing that they found a pretty decent strategy when thunderbolt took on the mini-dp port and added thunderbolt to the mini-dp connector. Sure there's some confusion in plugging thunderbolt into a mini-dp port, but as Apple was concerned, they were not taking away any functionality, but merely just adding the thunderbolt feature to an existing port.

Apple's potential adoption of Thunderbolt using the Type-C connector would be a similar strategy to the mini-dp/thunderbolt strategy. This finally allows them to unify ports on their whole line up macbook/pro/iphone/ipad/atv/accessories/power/displays, which with their scale would probably translate to a pretty massive reduction in cost for maintaining inventory of the many assortments of ports and manufacturing.

Based on the direction they've taken with the new Macbook and this announcement, It's pretty obvious that this is the direction they would like to go with and lays out the foundation for the expansion of the retina iMac into a retina thunderbolt display.

I'd say it's definitely more of a feature than it is a regression. The world of consumers has shown that it's been able to cope with USB 1 -> 1.1 -> 2 -> 3, with very little pain. For most people it will be the Type-C connector running at speeds varying from 12Mbps, 480Mbps, 10Gbps, 40Gbps... If you have the higher speed, you can supper everything below it (kind of like 10G/40G ethernet). Mac's will probably be sold with 40Gb Type-C ports, iPhones with 480Mb Type-C ports, Retina displays with 40Gb Type-C ports, all with the consumer being none-the-wiser as to whether they are running in USB mode or Thunderbolt mode.

[coldtea]

>iPhone 1st gen

Actually iPhone 1st gen got HUGE industry adoption, if we're talking about third party peripherals etc.

If you mean other companies using it in their phones, computers etc, Apple never allowed that in the first place.

[seanp2k2]

What's the case for Thunderbolt not just being USB 3.2? Now that it's using the exact same connector, it really seems like a solution in search of an actual use-case. I thought the external GPU thing would be amazing, except that totally failed to materialize, and I've even heard that it's being actively blocked.

[calgoo]

Patents and trademarks?

[mortenjorck]

Apple, and by extension most other OEMs, will likely label the ports in the same way Apple already differentiates Thunderbolt ports from the physically indistinguishable Mini DisplayPort. Most likely scenario:

- Type C with Thunderbolt gets the Thunderbolt zig-zag logo

- Type C with DisplayPort alternate mode gets the "screen" rectangle

- Type C with USB only is unmarked

[ajslater]

or perhaps the USB logo for USB only.

[legulere]

The USB type-c cables are also just a mess. They can support 5 different USB PD profiles and can support either just USB 2.0 or USB 3.1. This means 10 different cables. The cable included when buying the new Macbook for instance only supports USB 2.0.

People will soon wonder why their device is charging so slowly/having such low data transfer rates.

Now there are 2 additional thunderbolt cables (powered and unpowered) with type c on both ends. People will think it's an USB cable and wonder why their connection isn't working at all, or try to replace it with an USB cable

[qnaal]

> an USB

how do you pronounce usb?

[legulere]

Usually similar to ooh-ess-bay because I'm not a native english speaker, but here it was just an error.

[coldtea]

>In 2020 i won't be able to know if the monitor i recommend my mother will be able to connect to her laptop over the USB Type-C Port or not, or if it will run at full resolution or not, if it will be able to charge the notebook over it, or not... etc.

2020? Even in 2015 you can just look up the laptop model on Google and get results about whether the monitor will work with it or not, the resolution etc.

[kenrikm]

I fail to see how this is any different then the way that thunderbolt piggybacked on the display port interface. Yeah it's less then ideal but it's not a deal breaker.

[pachydermic]

Good thing computer prices are so ruthlessly deflationary!

It just doesn't really make sense to worry about this kind of stuff from a practical point of view. Sure, maybe it'll be a pain for historians and conservationists. But for everyone else, we'll just be constantly buying new computers anyways, right?

[asdf99]

that's very similar the home computer boom. if you look at the offerings at the time, everyone was running in a different direction. so many wonders. and in the end, cheap and available won.

[asdf99]

you mean, just like a dvi port?