> This whole thing is expensive, unnecessary, user-unfriendly and confusing (to the average user).
And yet, very profitable for the companies rolling it out so poorly, who can charge more for products featuring the new ports and nickel-and-dime us with expensive adapters, dongles, and cables to replace the perfectly functional USB-A ecosystem.
It's quite a clever trick they've managed to pull on their customers -- convincing us all our problems can be hand-waved away with a single, forceful utterance of "it's the future", thus relegating any criticism to "whining and moaning" about first-world problems.
That even Apple can't manage to simplify the mess within its own laptop line, let alone tablets and phones, is indicative of how poorly thought out this whole idea was from the start. They seem to have a device for just about every combination of incompatibility that is possible.
The goal was noble:
- provide enough power to charge an external device and ditch the bulky power supply and second cable
- support extremely high-speed devices like monitors and SSDs
- standardize the connector with a slimmer, symmetric design
And yet, very profitable for the companies rolling it out so poorly, who can charge more for products featuring the new ports and nickel-and-dime us with expensive adapters, dongles, and cables to replace the perfectly functional USB-A ecosystem.
It's quite a clever trick they've managed to pull on their customers -- convincing us all our problems can be hand-waved away with a single, forceful utterance of "it's the future", thus relegating any criticism to "whining and moaning" about first-world problems.
That even Apple can't manage to simplify the mess within its own laptop line, let alone tablets and phones, is indicative of how poorly thought out this whole idea was from the start. They seem to have a device for just about every combination of incompatibility that is possible.
The goal was noble:
- provide enough power to charge an external device and ditch the bulky power supply and second cable
- support extremely high-speed devices like monitors and SSDs
- standardize the connector with a slimmer, symmetric design
So far it's been an utter failure of execution.