USB is a mess. Lots of devices that claim support are actually way out of spec. As a result it is hard to say exactly what will happen when people start plugging stuff in.
Yes, that's what the USB working group needed. A larger committee, with a new entrant telling them they're all wrong, dragging them through the gravel until they submit.
It's very strange to read this comment on article about USB, which has been developed by committee from the beginning. To me it seems quite innovative, and arguably disruptive to have a single standard for all these things. Maybe USB doesn't clear your personal bar, but then why worry about this at all?
You conclusion is something I don't agree with because many sensible things with USB can be fixed and can have a pretty big impact.
For example, where I live some municipalities use Bluetooth for tracking and datamining of citizens. Some shops do the same thing but for other purposes.
These are things that can relatively easily be fixed.
The article links to a thread on the linux-usb mailing list where the author mentions he does sometimes resort to that.
It sounds to me like the author genuinely wants to have a discussion about some of the quirks in the USB protocol. I don't see anything wrong with pursuing all available options.
This so much. The current USB @&$#-up seems to be the result of "EEs try to expand line-level encoding to create an API."
This should all be solved at the negotiation layer, even if that needs to be made more complex, so that the remaining components can be simpler and reasonably-behaved.
Instead, we got something that allows each device to be a bit more electrically simple, at the cost of ballooning complexity for the ultimate use case.
USB-IF took their eye off the ball, and wrote a spec for manufacturers, without thinking about the consequences to consumers.
At some point, it's a value trade-off between {working product for use cases} and {+$2 on BoM}.
I would disagree with their choice if micro-USB wasn't so lousy mechanically.. I've had more Micro-USB devices fail due to socket failure, than anything else.
Is it an unpopular opinion that USB is already fast enough and has enough features and USB implementers should instead work on cost reduction and compatibility so that we can all move away from USB 2 and pre-type-C connectors?
But this seems like a perfectly valid argument to have. I hate that I currently have at least 5 different "usb-like" cable types in my household: usbc to usbc, usbc to lightning, usba to usbc, usba to lightning, usba to microusb, and I probably still have some mini USB cables in some boxes.
I'd really hope that if something new is proposed it will be only once every player have decided to put their weight behind it to propose and push for a change.
Don't worry too much, USB has been steadily making a progress even if it's not expected to be mass adopted for several years. In fact, it was too much to the level that now it brought all the fragmentation headaches to everyone. If this regulation can slow them down and give vendors time to improve their implementation quality, it would be actually better for everyone.
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