TECHQUICKIES – USB Type-C as fast as possible
Sept. 9, 2014

Transcript

The two original connector specifications for USB were A and B
(don’t you love it when engineers name things ?)
with both male and female conector types for each.
Female A-receptacles were intended for host devices like computers
the ones that control the transfer of data over the USB connection,
while female B-receptacles were intended for « upstream » peripheral devices,
printers, scanners, CD burners and the like.
Most cables feature a male A-connector and a male B-connector of some sort
because with the exception of « on the go-capable » devices
there’s no reason to connect two hosts to each other or two peripherals.

0:37 Now back to the original standards.
I don’t want to hate on them or anything,
they did propel the Universal Serial Bus
at (to ?) damn near ubiquity in the computing world,
but they had some fairly significant limitations :
they were large, bulky and fragile,
rated at a mere 1500 (fiften hundred) insertion cycles;
they were only designed to deliver a little bit of power
(« 100mA power delivery »);
the speeds at which they operated quickly became a bottleneck
(« 12 MBPS data speed »; usually written : 12 Mbps; = USB 1.0 < 2.0 = 480 Mbps)

0:59 and finally, particularly irritating on the A-connector,
they only went in one way
without any clear visual indication of which way was right,
leading to awesome computer nerd jokes like :
« How many tries does it take to get a plug into a USB conection ?
Four ! Twice to get it wrong,
once to think you’ve got it wrong
and one more time to put the damn thing in,
so that you can hear that ever so satisfying « to-doo ». »

1:22 Now, many of these issues have been improved over the years.
Almost right away (in April 2000 !) USB 2.0 dramatically improved speeds
without requiring new physical connectors or cables.
Mini- and micro-versions of the B-connector were developed
to be more durable and more suitable for devices that fit in your pocket.
And more recently, the backwards-compatible USB 3.0 standard
brought about new A-, B- and micro-B connectors
that add physical pins to dramatically improve speed and power delivery again
to keep USB competitive with newer standards like eSATA and Thunderbolt.

1:55 And that’s where we’re at today.
But can USB be even better ?
Apple sure thought so
and introduced their proprietary Ligthning connector (2012)
which is smaller,
rugged enough for me to sleep with my phone under my pillow
without worrying about breaking it,
and reversible,
but unfortunately still limited to USB 2.0 speeds.

2:12 So there is still room for improvement
and here it is ! The future is now.
The USB Type-C connector has been finalized
and if it delivers what it’s promising,
it’s gonna basically kick all those other connectors to the curb
with a completely redesigned connector,
designed to deliver up to double the data of USB 3.0,
ten gigabits per second,
up to a hundred watts of power,
so you could conceivably power a monitor
or charge a laptop off of it

2:40 – really, you can’t go four seconds without reusing a joke ?
anyway, back on topic –
it has a slim design with a ten thousand cycle durability rating,
so you can use the same cable across all of your devices
and not worry about breaking them
and finally… it has a reversible connector !
so you’ll never have to play « guess the orientation » again.
3:02 (..Advertisement..)