My old chargers are all USB-A, and they all still work. I'll be needing that standard for a while, still.
Also, almost always, the open side on the appliance is down, and the blocked side is up, so you just need to put the blocked side of the cable down.
it's funny because nobody ever mentions how much of a bitch it was to plug in AT ports without pulling the whole unit out.
Honestly, I would like an L-shaped USB standard. It would make it so much easier to figure out what orientation things should go. I have a super-tower PC, and there isn't enough ambient light behind it for me to easily identify where to stick my USB peripherals.
I am pretty much just blindly stabbing, hoping to connect. 😣
And some people were gifted with the clairvoyance to always plug it in one go. Yes I know at least a few.
I've always said, i have the most worthless super power ever imagined in life or comic books.
in that I can always plug a USB cable in on the first try.
The heroes and villains are racing to plug a USB into the Blue and Red USBs before the other can...then a Random Idiot casually inserts a jack into the Green USB, obtaining the powers of the Infinity Serial Bus.
I'll make and sell USBC cables that only have pins on one side of the connectors, marketing them as retro nostalgic.
I will not be marking them differently from your other cables, for authenticity of the experience.
Replace half the cables from all of your friends' cables drawers without them knowing and go enjoy your free ticket to hell
wouldn't that actually be completely fine since the ports handle the orientation?
"You'd always stick it in wrong at least once, preferably twice, and then swear about it under your breath, as was the style at that time. And the smaller devices had the micro USB ports that had the same problem. And you'd have to take out your mouse's ball and gently clean all the lint off it when it would start getting all onery. And don't even get me started about when they removed all the audio jacks from all the cellular phones!"
Grandpa, What's an audio jack? Is that what you guys used to eat those tide pod things?
Can't you see that gramp's busy cleaning his ornery balls
Was it mini or micro usb, tho?
USB-B always getting forgotten
USB micro 3 was the weirdest. One of my Samsunk Note phones used it.
Neat thing a lot of people didn't know about it though was that you could still plug an older Micro B in and leave the rest unplugged, so it was backwards compatible for things like charging and slow data transfer.
I also have a widescreen conferencing monitor at work with a USB3-B connector for its built-in camera. It also has Type C, but I guess they wanted to give options for people with computers that didn't have Thunderbolt ports or were using older docking stations.
I have an old Samsung tablet with a USB micro 3, gathering dust in a drawer somewhere. Galaxy tab 2 or 3 maybe? It was a top-of-the-line device in that era, and the only device I've ever seen with that funky connector. I actually find it curious we didn't see the standard more, as it's backwards-compatible with regular micro-USB in a pinch, but when you did use the proper cable it enabled both faster charging and data transfer.
Unless you're an office worker or musician
Mini was okay, micro was awful
The pain of those clips
breaking so fucking often 😭
huh really? i'm using micro 5pin on my daily driver phone for more than a decade now and my stock cable from 2013 still works perfectly
I've had them break, but nowhere near as often as people online claim. Maybe I've just been lucky.
I've also has USB C break down on me already, so..
This is one of those cases where the name brand cable probably is better than an off brand.
Tangential story, but a cheapo headphone cable once broke the headphone jack on my computer. It was too big and stretched out the connector in there.
Yes.
I actually miss having to clean the mouse's ball. It was oddly therapeutic.
Nah give me lasers, but it was fun to spin as a fidget toy
USB-A, the fonz of USB.
I’ll see myself out.
USB-A was a rare case of a quantum-locked consumer device. It would not reveal its orientation until after observing all possible combinations.
There are quantum objects that need to be rotated 720 degrees to return to their starting orientation. 360 degrees is not enough to get back to the start.
That's what USB-A is like.
One day, children will ask why we don't make the plugs different shapes so you know if you're using a 60 watt cable or a 240 watt cable or something in between.
(I do not know anything about electricity so I'm certain there's a better way to explain this but it's bananas I have USB cables that look identical but my Steam Deck will die while plugged in if I grab the wrong one)
The 90's were even more lead-addled than that. You remember these things:
Barrel jacks and plugs. Typically used for DC power, and that's all I can reliably say. The socket had an inner pin and and outer ring that engaged with the inner and outer surfaces of the plug. Which was positive and which was negative? BOTH! A given power brick or device could be wired either way, which is why most of them had one of these diagrams printed on them somewhere:
There was no attempt at standardizing sizes or lengths for different polarities or voltages. It was entirely possible you could own a 12V center positive power brick that would plug straight into a 6V center negative device. If you were lucky, the device had reverse current protection, maybe a self-resetting fuse. Some didn't. Or, somehow worse, you'd find a brick with the right voltage and polarity that wouldn't physically fit.
So the current state of USB-C charging is considerably less lead-brained than what I grew up with.
The barrel pin system could have been great if it was standardized. Only one valid polarity with barrel size being keyed to voltage while pin size was keyed to amperage, for example. A plug would only fit if it was the correct specs, and would always fit if it was the correct specs. Unfortunately, nobody ever had this idea while they were popular and it's much too late now.
That's because your supposed to use usb 3.2-1v3.1.2-hyperfast and not USB 3.2-1v3.1.2-superfast.
One day USB-A will be so uncommon
Every USB-C to C connector I've seen ends up coming with half a dozen adapters, because cell phones seem like the only device that uses it reliably.
No, not likely.
USB A and B still have use cases, predominently in their physical strength.
For any use case that requires a stronger socket that will take abuse and needs to hold longer, then USB C fails.
Its smaller and more brittle, more prone to failing under pressure.
I design and build industrial things (custom, <10pcs ever) and USB-B is my go-to device connector for this reason
Same here, we make diagnostic devices used in factories. These are shipped with USB A to USB B cables.
USB C was considered but it doesn't have enough withdrawal force
A "Showerthought" is a simple term used to describe the thoughts that pop into your head while you're doing everyday things like taking a shower, driving, or just daydreaming. The most popular seem to be lighthearted clever little truths, hidden in daily life.
Here are some examples to inspire your own showerthoughts:
If you made it this far, showerthoughts is accepting new mods. This community is generally tame so its not a lot of work, but having a few more mods would help reports get addressed a little sooner.
Whats it like to be a mod? Reports just show up as messages in your Lemmy inbox, and if a different mod has already addressed the report, the message goes away and you never worry about it.