this post was submitted on 09 Oct 2023
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[–] [email protected] 208 points 1 year ago (3 children)

TL;DR: its cheaper that way,

And i value that decision

[–] [email protected] 99 points 1 year ago (6 children)

I can bet you it's incompetence. They failed upwards. Sure, protocol is great and universal, but connector is atrocious and it has nothing to do with cost. Few points in favor of this hypothesis:

  1. Plastic inside of the connector was initially black. Why chose hard to see color? Go with something easier to see;
  2. Connector is perfectly rectangular and only distinguishing feature they made hard to see. Don't make ti symmetrical if it's not reversible, basic design principle;
  3. Connector is perfectly rectangular making it difficult to insert. There's a reason why most connectors have rounded corners, they are self-correcting, even TypeC does this;
  4. They made various different connector types but pushed for the only one with these issues. No one ever had doubts how type B or mini B or micro B go in.
[–] [email protected] 55 points 1 year ago (5 children)

Initially, the plastic inside the connector was white. They started to use black to denote USB2.0 devices, and USB2.0 rapidly became the standard. They at least tried to do something similar with blue plastic with USB3.0.

It's basically the only example I can think of where the plug and socket are rotationally symmetrical without also being reversible. That's the kind of thing where I ask "did you test this before you shipped it?" Thirty years later we're still plagued by the damn thing.

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[–] [email protected] 44 points 1 year ago (7 children)

Also a male USB 2 plug fits perfectly into a RJ45 slot :-/ In my days of tech support, I've seen multiple people plugging their USB printer cable into the network slot of their computer and it's a perfect fit so they were always convinced they didn't do anything wrong... That's clearly a design flaw while all other connectors have distinct sizes.

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[–] [email protected] 35 points 1 year ago (5 children)

No one ever had doubts how type B or mini B or micro B go in.

I agree with most of your post, but micro B is a step too far. That fucking plug was always inserted with the following procedure:

  1. Try to plug it in.
  2. Flip the side and try to plug it in again.
  3. Flip it again because you had the right damn side the first time.

Always, always, always.

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[–] [email protected] 23 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Hindsight is 20/20. You're raising every issue with the original USB plug, then proceed to highlight how they addressed these issues going forward.

You're describing inexperience and calling it incompetence.

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[–] [email protected] 42 points 1 year ago (3 children)

New question: why did it have rotational symmetry?

[–] [email protected] 23 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Because fuck you that's why

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[–] [email protected] 23 points 1 year ago

Considering the much higher cost of production then vs now, it makes complete sense. The economy of scale took care of that problem with time.

[–] [email protected] 162 points 1 year ago (1 children)

USB-A walked so USB-C could fly.

[–] [email protected] 34 points 1 year ago (21 children)
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[–] [email protected] 158 points 1 year ago (4 children)
[–] [email protected] 67 points 1 year ago (2 children)

The picture explains itself. The cable exists in a 4-dimensional space.

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[–] [email protected] 21 points 1 year ago (3 children)
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[–] [email protected] 124 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Somewhat understandable, but they could've also done something like HDMI and DisplayPort and gone with a shape that could only plug in one way. It might not have been "as cheap as possible" but probably not as much added expense as the extra wiring and stuff. (maybe, idk shit about manufacturing)

[–] [email protected] 33 points 1 year ago (3 children)

I really wish hdmi was symmetrical. (Peer behind tv, “which way goes up?” Tries to plug it in, “fml it was the other way” flips it drops it)

[–] [email protected] 25 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I wish too, mainly because HDMI cables are much less flexible and twisting them 180° can create tension.

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[–] [email protected] 123 points 1 year ago (21 children)

About a decade ago or so, I found myself in a reddit argument with someone that claimed they had never attempted to plug a USB in unsuccessfully. They said that every single time they've plugged in, it was the correct way. Some people are insane.

[–] [email protected] 59 points 1 year ago (6 children)

Honestly, with high quality USB A plugs you could feel the logo on the side that was "up", and if you knew which side your motherboard or front panel considered "up", it'd be easy to always plug devices in correctly.

Just that the vast majority of manufacturers stopped caring relatively early on, which meant you couldn't rely on it anymore.

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[–] [email protected] 30 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

They're supposed to label the USBs so that you can tell which side is the top side and which side is the bottom side.

The problem is that, A they often don't label them and, B I can't remember which way round it's supposed to go anyway, so it wouldn't help.

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[–] [email protected] 25 points 1 year ago (1 children)
  1. Attempt to plug in the USB A device
  2. If you succeed. End procedure
  3. Otherwise, destroy the reality you currently reside in. All remaining universes are the ones where you plugged in the device on the first try.

That wasn't so hard, was it?

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[–] [email protected] 25 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (7 children)

Perhaps a controversial opinion here, but the usefulness of reversibility is vastly overrated. It's not a game changer, just a tiny first-world luxury that's nice to have, but it does it by introducing a bunch of unnecessary complexity that I'd rather avoid. Not worth the trade off IMO. I can count on one hand the number of minutes USB-C has saved me by being reversible and I honestly don't care

[–] [email protected] 20 points 1 year ago (5 children)

I'm happier with how long usb c last before they start getting finicky than I am the reversiblity.

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[–] [email protected] 111 points 1 year ago (10 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 49 points 1 year ago (3 children)

For USB-A, it's usually not even 50/50. It's the witchcraft superposition when the first two tries don't work.

[–] [email protected] 29 points 1 year ago

It always works the third time, 60 percent of the time.

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[–] [email protected] 35 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (12 children)

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.

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[–] [email protected] 84 points 1 year ago (6 children)

It’s not an issue of not being reversible. The problem is that it is symmetrical without being reversible. HDMI and DisplayPort are much less annoying. Even USB Type B (printer cables) is relatively easy to figure out orientation for.

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[–] [email protected] 84 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (15 children)

they should just go with perfectly circular, with different sizes for different applications. imagine a 20mm unit - high power/bandwidth hoses with a satisfying locking mechanism that magnetically seals the connection.

and makes the proton pack sound. and rgb fuck nevermind go back this was a bad idea

[–] [email protected] 42 points 1 year ago (7 children)

Circular isn't a great idea, and here are most of the idea why it is not : https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/528821/why-dont-we-have-a-circular-usb-port

USB required to have a stable connexion, as it's a digital signal and not an analog as jack ports, which just sends curent through it. Rotating the connector could maybe introduce issues for signal integrity.

The usb connector has much more connectors than a jack port. It would take a very long hole to fit them all. (usb 3+, usb C...)

Size constraint. USB C is flat, a round port is not. So it's bigger in 1 way, but smaller in the other, and so creates more design challenges.

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[–] [email protected] 71 points 1 year ago (13 children)

I get why it's not reversible. But why the hell is it not keyed so that is obvious which orientation is correct? A small, cheap, notch would have worked wonders.

[–] [email protected] 51 points 1 year ago (5 children)

Almost all connectors in use on computers at the time USB was introduced were already keyed, and a fat lot of good it did us. Ask anyone who tried fumbling around behind a three ton CRT monitor or computer case -- even with the keyed connectors, feeling for which side was up, getting anything plugged in without eyes on it was already nigh on impossible.

What the USB A connector did do which was new at the time was introduce a connector that did not have any protruding pins on either the male or female end, and thus theoretically at least could not be damaged by fucking up the insertion. Unlike any of the then-common D-Sub connectors (VGA, serial, parallel) or DIN (PS/2 mouse and keyboard, Apple serial, S-Video, etc.). USB didn't even have the little clip to breal off like an RJ-45 Ethernet or RJ-11 phone line connector.

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[–] [email protected] 39 points 1 year ago (2 children)

TL:DR; It was cheaper and they figured if it didn't work you could flip it over and try again. So it's mildly inconvenient to save a few cents on manufacturing each connector and to limited the number is conductors to 4, something it turns out was a bad idea anyway because newer USB standards use more than 4 conductors.

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[–] [email protected] 32 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Making USB reversible to begin with would have necessitated twice as many wires and twice as many circuits, and would have doubled the cost. Bhatt says his team was aware at the time of the frustration that a rectangular design could have, versus a round connector. But in an effort to keep it as cheap as possible, the decision was made to go with a design that, in theory, would give users a 50/50 chance of plugging it in correctly (you can up the odds by looking at the inside first, or identifying the logo).

[–] [email protected] 19 points 1 year ago (6 children)

I was there when we had lots of "round" connectors like Din connectors but also lots of proprietary ones.

That was way worse, trying for the eleventh time to put it in correctly without looking as it's under/on the backside in a jungle of other cables, and not damaging any of the fragile 7 pins... gargl.

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[–] [email protected] 28 points 1 year ago (5 children)

What a pathetic excuse. You know what's at the other end of a USB-A cable? A USB-B connector that didn't have the symmetry problem. Also, Firewire existed around the same time (in fact, slightly earlier) and didn't have the symmetry problem.

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[–] [email protected] 23 points 1 year ago (2 children)

The worst thing about USB is that it always takes 3 attempts on average to get the fucker in if you don't know the orientation of the port.

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[–] [email protected] 23 points 1 year ago

the problem is the plug is rectangular (has exterior rotational symmetry) AND not reversible - if the plugs were L shaped it would be clear by both feel and brief glance which rotation was correct

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