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If it ain’t broke (img.gvid.tv)
submitted 1 year ago by to c/memes@lemmy.world
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[–] 6 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Just make the usb-c connector a circule and not an oval. I am guessing that the only reasons it isn't circular is thinness (devices are thin and need thin connectors) and manufacturing costs (probably harder to get it circular with all of the inner pins)

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  • [–] 4 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    <.< I can’t tell if this is a joke or not.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago (1 child)

    Seems serious to me. Is there an obvious reason it'd be a joke / is not to be taken seriously?

    I expect theres some technical limitation that wouldn't be obvious to a layman, but I'd love to learn if you can point to resources.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago (2 children)

    I can’t think of the proper words so I apologize for how untechnical this is: If you look inside the connector you’ll see a thin line jutting out. That’s the actual thing that USB-C connects with. You can’t make that round. The reason the outer part of the plug is an “oval” is just to make plugging it in easier. It could be a rectangle and still work.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago (1 child)

    Assuming by "jutting pieces" you mean the pins, yeah, I could see that being difficult ultimately to manufacture into the 3.5mm jack configuration.

    But translating each pin to a "band" (sorry I'm not very technical myself) on a jack with the form factor of a 3.5mm pin should be doable. You'd probably need 5 or 10 bands since (as I understand it) USBs use a 5 pin connection (again, as I understand it, most devices mirror the 5 pins on each side, but some more advanced/specialized USBs utilized the USB-C connector as 10 pins, hence the possible desire for a 10 band jack).

    Again, I could see that being difficult to manufacture, but not impossible, and especially if it became a standard package. Might need a bigger jack than 3.5mm though.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    USB C has a (soon to be) max power delivery of 240 watts. Shorting that onto a data pin would be catastrophic.

    You can kinda work around that, but honestly the easiest way is to just not present the opportunity.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago

    You can’t make that round.

    I mean, you could. You'd need three times as many contacts in the receptacle as pins in the plug. Each pin would have to be able to touch exactly 1 or 2 contacts simultaneously. Each receptacle contact would need to programmatically assign itself to perform the role expected for the particular pin it is touching at any given moment.

    Pin 1 would start off touching Contact A. As you rotate it, it would connect to A and B. Keep rotating it, it drops A and touches B alone. Then BC. Then C. Then CD. Then D. Then DE, and so on.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    Hmm, maybe just use some variation of DIN connector? It's a circle, but keyed to one position, and fairly effortless to plug in the right way without seeing. Also full size DIN connectors are robust as hell and can be easily replaced and rewired.

    Hell, my Commodore 64 IEC bus cables still work after decades, and I can't say the same about many USB cables these days.

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  • [–] 0 points 1 year ago (3 children)

    Thanks to the eu, it's unlikely we'll ever have another usb variant. Certainly nothing in the next decade.

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  • [–] 6 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    USB-c has a bunch of futureproofing in it, like a bunch of pins that aren't used yet. And even without those pins, is supports usb4v2, which has 4 lanes of PCIe 4, and they keep doubling the speed every minor release of usb.
    If we get to a point where those other pins are needed in the next decade, I'll be surprised.

    So unless there is something physically problematic with the connector, like after all this time we suddenly realize that the design causes failure in some common scenario, or material science leaps ahead and the port becomes too large for consumer devices, then it's probably good that they're not making a new standard.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago (1 child)

    I am not knocking usb-c. It would actually be nice if the standards were move unforced so one could be gauranteed exactly which version they were getting.

    My issue is exactly what you're saying about material science and not knowing what might come along and what it would take to overcome the EU standards. I predict they will need to revise the rules before anything would be able to meet the current standards by it'll be 15+ years before we know it.

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  • [–] 0 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    Found the apple fanboy.

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  • [–] 0 points 1 year ago

    That's what you get out of that? I have no problem with usb-c, I won't buy anything that doesn't use it. However, I feel that the EU has set too high of a standard and we're going to get stuck until they revise it.

    Feel free to argue how if the EU law was applied back when USB-A was top dog, we'd still have made the switch to USB-C but I don't see it.

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