Don't know where all that research driven approach led us... USB-A worked perfectly, nobody ever had a problem with it; except having to turn it around a couple times to figure out how to plug it (which could be solved with a coloured dot on plug and cable). USB-C had the advantage of being a little bit smaller, but it sucks in any other aspect. While I might have broken a couple USB-A cables and plugs in my life, I do not expect an USB-C cable to last much longer than one year.

[–] Geth@lemmy.dbzer0.com 8 points 15 hours ago

Usb-c has already proven itself to be reliable, it was designed to be reversible, it is easy to insert and remove with good tactile feedback and is compact while having lots of versatility. All traits I would love to see in an universal power plug.

To me USB-A was what schuko is today. It works and is mostly fine but I'm sure we could do better if we put our minds to it. The problem with todays plugs and sockets is they all work just about, enough that no one with any authority is going to bother with the topic. Any improvement needs to be by an unrealistically huge margin to be worth the investment required.

[–] Fifrok@discuss.tchncs.de 3 points 15 hours ago* (last edited 15 hours ago)

The problem with USB-A is that well, it has to have no problems.

Ramblings

What I mean by that is, for USB to be a 'universal' serial bus it has to keep legacy support while still allowing the standard as a whole to keep up with new tech, and there's just no sane way to do that on one plug type.

As for why type C is the way it is:

The USB Implementers Forum decided that adding more pins to the original format (type A) was a dead end (no way to keep backwards compatibility after a point), and the only way foward was to make type A a 'legacy' port while a new connector would take over as the main/modern one.

The forum decided that to make that happen type C has to be more decoupled from type A then previous connectors.

Since the most profitable market for electronics is the mobile one, that's what they aim for with type C. (And because all the previous mobile USB types sucked, especially the micro).

Also probably atleast some if not most of the forum members wanted planned obsolescence, it's goverened by tech companies after all.

Still, type C and the 4.0 standard in general is pretty good at doing what it was meant to do.

[–] Deebster@infosec.pub 2 points 17 hours ago (1 children)

USB A doesn't support at the fancy high-power PD/PPS features.

[–] InFerNo@lemmy.ml 1 points 16 hours ago

Pretty sure I can solder something together using a USB-PD decoy 😄 Made a bunch of barrel jack adapters the same way.