>Much of USB-C’s awesome capability comes from Thunderbolt and other Alternate Modes. But due to their potential bandwidth demands, computers can’t have very many USB-C ports.
Why is this the case?
I read that thunderbolt v3 can handle upwards of 40Gbit/s.
Ok... but what is limiting the number of USB-C Thunderbolt-enabled ports that a given computer can have?
Surely each of those ports are not being maxed out to 100% of their bandwidth 24/7?
Why can't the bandwidth just be limited as needed like in a cheap router for example?
> The crazy thing here is that it’s not so hard to hit the standard set of “pro” ports —
Given that the cheapest USB hub allows you to plug in half a dozen USB-A devices and SD cards, and given that frequently they are not used at all by anyone, why would it be preferable to add 3 dedicated ports instead of just using one of the four available USB-C ports?
The same goes to the HDMI and phone/mic ports.
In fact, nowadays you have monitors that not only support video over USB-C but also serve as USB-A hubs, which means that with a single USB-C connector you can get everything you mentioned in your example.
>I also like having dedicated power and display ports (HDMI-out is a requirement for the foreseeable future) as well, which are obvious and cannot have anything else stuffed into them
I don't understand this argument when any of the ports would work. If USB C can handle power, data transfer, video, audio, etc. and you had multiple USB C ports on a device then any one of them would work for any use. That's such an easier system then having a bunch of different cords and ports.
I have lots of stuff plugged in at my desk -- but it's plugged into a dock, and there's just a single cable that goes into my laptop. Thinking about my usages in the past few years, I can't think of a time where 4 ports (of my choosing) wouldn't have worked for me -- so long as I could change them over the lifetime of the device.
> The ideal exact connectors probably differ a lot per person
Agreed. All I really need is more USB-C ports. Both my current MacBook Air and my upcoming MacBook Pro have only two USB-C ports and I don’t understand why they didn’t make them with four USB-C ports.
> Like many professionals, I prefer to have dedicated keyboard/mouse, speakers, and Ethernet, and would have been happy to run a second cable if it brought those things back.
Each port provides 5V/1.5A; enough for multiple USB-A peripherals on a single port with a USB-C to multi-USB-A. (I have a LG 5K and I use a keyboard, mouse, and microphone on one port; it works great) And USB-C speed (5 Gbps) will not bottleneck data transfer in that case.
> Apple's 2-USB-C-port laptop was literal insanity.
Actually... I do get the idea. 99.9% of the time I only use one of my four USB-C/TB ports, and that's for power. The other 0.1% is when I connect my Android phone for a firmware update (it's rooted, so have to go the hard way) or an SD card reader.
> This is naive. The chip hardware support to have 2 extra USB A ports is nothing compared to having two extra USB C/Thunderbolt ports and USB C/Thunderbolt is overkill for many situations.
Type C doesn't require anything more than USB 2.0 with the same signals routed out. There's no difference whatsoever. Type C is just a connector. Yes there will be more chip support if you decide to make the connector more fully-functional but that design choice is on the device manufacturer. They do not need to do that to have a Type C port.
> Relatedly, why can't I get a simple USB-C hub? I have four USB-C ports on my laptop and I need six. Back in the USB-A days, I'd just get a $30 hub and four new full speed ports at the cost of one on the laptop.
The problem is that, I believe, a USB-C port is effectively required to provide a minimum of 5V at 3A on every port. I believe that USB 3 only requires 5V at 0.9A and USB 2.0 only requires 500mA (you nominally have to negotiate up to 500mA from 100mA--but nobody ever does that they just suck down 500mA without paying attention).
At that point, you can see how much more power USB-C is shoveling around. A 4-port hub is shoveling 60W minimum for USB-C, roughly 20W maximum for USB 3 and roughly 10W maximum for USB 2.
And, to be fair, life wasn't magically better in the USB 2 hub days. I have had loads of USB 2.0 hubs that do screwball things once they get a little overdrawn on their power. I eventually discovered that a good way to predict reliability of my USB 2 hubs was to look at the amperage of the wall wart that they shipped with it (the bigger the better).
And USB 3 isn't automatically better. I literally just had to replace a whole bunch of old, very nice, very stable, aluminum wedge USB 3 hubs because Microsoft updated something and simply plugging them in would blue screen the computer. Once I bought all new plastic chintztastic USB 3 hubs, Windoze is now happy. Microsoft can go die in a fire.
> There is absolutely zero need for USB-A. None. It does nothing whatsoever that USB-C can't do, and there are ton of things that USB-C can do better.
What's the USB-C story nowadays if you have N USB-C peripherals and M USB-C ports where N > M?
Most USB-C hubs seem to have one USB-C for connecting to the computer, one USB-C for connecting to a peripheral, and then a bunch of USB-A for connecting to more peripherals.
To get something that actually increases the number of USB-C peripherals, especially if more than one of your peripherals needs more than low power, and is reliable it appears that you have to get a Thunderbolt 3 or 4 dock and it is pretty pricey.
Until there are cheap reliable 1 to many USB-C hubs USB-A is not going to go away.
> Why is any company having more USB-2 slots than USB-3 these days?
I think it's not a case of "having more USB-2 slots than USB-3 slots", I think it's instead a case of "having precisely two USB-2 slots", no matter how many USB-3 slots there are. The reason for exactly two USB-2 slots is obvious: one of them is for the keyboard, the other one is for the mouse. Neither the keyboard nor the mouse need more than USB-2, so there's no reason to have the more complex USB-3 hardware for these two ports.
Other than those two ports, it makes sense to have the rest of the USB ports be USB 3, which seems to be the case here, even though there's only one (the USB-C port seems to be meant to be always plugged into a charger, so it might also be USB-2 only).
> iPhones are constantly bashed by a group of users because of not having USB-C connectors. [...]
I found that most (if not all) people who rave about a USB-C-only future do not actually use more than 1 or 2 peripherals. Or they want it for power connection only.
Anybody who a) has a significant number of USB-A peripherals (in my case, I'd say the number is above 30 distinct devices), b) understands that the USB-C label doesn't mean that it will work when you plug it in, has a more sensible approach: USB-C is fine, but don't remove our USB-A (or lightning) ports just yet.
> Do you understand that USB-C is also an HDMI port and you just need a USB-C to HDMI cable if your monitor/tv doesn't have yet the USB-C port (which they are starting to come with)?
Yes. But I have tons of perfectly good legacy equipment, and no incentive to go buy a whole raft of new cable or dongles.
> What's so good about having a port that can only serve one purpose and not be generic purpose?
In an ideal world, sure. But in the real world, we've already got a clusterfuck of different cables and ports that all say that they are USB-C on the tin, but have wildly different capabilities in practice. If I've got ports that are special purpose, they might as well advertise the fact - Ethernet goes in the RJ45, display out goes in the HDMI, power goes into the power adapter.
Of course I also like having lots of ports, so in addition to power, HDMI, Ethernet, 3.5mm audio in and out, SD card reader, I look for 4-6 USB A ports. A 17" screen and a dedicated graphics card are nice. I'm not really a ultrabook person...
I don't get it. Why? And how many is "so many"?
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