USB inventor explains why the connector was not designed to be reversible
Someday we'll look back and laugh (or cry) at our early USB struggles.
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But in practical use, people found out that even a 50/50 chance of plugging the connector in the right way is annoying enough to warrant the additional complexity of reversability, hence the development of USB Type C.
The USB-C design turned out to be much more durable and versatile (signal and power wise) in addition to reversability compared to the previous USB designs, and it is developed specifically to address the problems people found with USB-A/B/MicroUSB.
Sometimes problems only reveal themselves through real life usage, and iterative improvement through a scientific trial and error process to address these problem is how you get development progress.
For USB-A, it's usually not even 50/50. It's the witchcraft superposition when the first two tries don't work.
It always works the third time, 60 percent of the time.
Yeah, people don't take into account quantum positioning, pass-through phenomenon, or the fact that I can't "see" when I plug it in wrong and that makes me think maybe my fingers are dumb and I missed the hole and not that I need to reverse it and try again.
First try doesn't go in: oh I guess I have to flip it. Second try doesn't go in, fiddle it a bunch still doesn't go in. Fuck I had it the first time. Third try goes in immediately
USB-C has more connectors for data and power than A/B so it's not a surprise that it's more capable.
What's really changed is demand. No one really expected USB to be used to power everything, it was only ever really expected to be used on computers and maybe digital cameras, smartphones used to arrange matters for themselves. It was only when they two began to adopt USB aas well that calls for smaller ports and higher capacity cables started to arise.
No one really expected USB to be used to power everything
Yeah, it's not like the U stands for Universal or something.
Yeah, Universal Spower Bus. Sounds right. I was reading the "power" part emphasized in the comment you replied to. Prior to mass adoption by phone mfrs, USB wasn't powering all that much. You'd usually have 5v wall wart and cable ending in a barrel connector. Hate those things.
I chuckled more than I would like to admit about that spelled out USB name, dunno, it's funny
The Universal Spower Bus
sounds like an awesome transit vehicle!
Let's take a ride!
Edit: Spower is a contraction of Space and Power. Yes, you heard me right. It's running on spinfinite space power!
And there you have it,
The Universal Spower Bus:
I'm not really sure what that means. The original A/B specification did not allow for much variable voltage. It's only universal in name, not in nature. There was absolutely no way to deal with high voltage devices, the cables were not adaptive.
USB 4.0 specification allows for powering things like electrical drills. No way the original USB A/B specification can handle that.
As long as it's a serial bus
You are right to an extent but the context of its original universality is in the rest of the name. Universal serial bus. The idea was a universal port for dealing with data and connections not neccesarily power.
And yet it still can't retingulate droopglers. Pathetic.
I wish it was 50/50. A lot of the time it wouldn't plug in so I flipped it. Still didn't work so I flipped it back to the original orientation and it magically plugs in.
USB & me: third times the charm!
Can you imagine if it was a triangle with only one correct way to plug it in?
Apologies to the shit alternative universe I just created
Can someone explain to me why I keep reading about people having problems plugging in USB A connectors upside down? I feel like I'm taking crazy pills. Per the spec, the holes always go up. They indicate the correct way to plug in the port. Not only that, but the printed logo on the connector also always goes up.
The only time this is SLIGHTLY confusing is if you have a desktop tower where the motherboard is essentially mounted sideways, but for that case it just takes an extra second to think which way is "up" from the perspective of the motherboard.
And before anyone says "who reads the spec?", it feels like I subconsciously knew this for something like a decade before I even knew what a spec was.
I've seen enough devices with the usb ports mounted upside down, for whatever strange reason. Also sometimes you want to plug something in without looking, this is much easier with USB-C
That's wild, I've never seen an upside down port.
I agree reversibility is better and am happy usb c will finally kill this meme.
Sometimes you're working on an IoT device in a tight space, which makes rotating/seeing everything much harder.
Especially if you drop the cable it falls into a crevice somewhere.
You probably won't have trouble plugging it in the first time, but gods forbid you unplug/replug it then the cable rotates 540 degrees and you have no idea how it was plugged in before
Yeah that's fair. But I feel like I've seen these "USB superposition" memes since before IoT was even a thing.
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