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whoooooo123 | 2 years ago

The problem with USB-a isn't that it's non reversible, it's that it's non-reversible _and_ rectangular, so it's not clear at a glance which way round it should go.

All they had to do was make the connector have a non-symmetrical shape so that it's immediately obvious which way round it goes when you pick it up - you could do it without even looking. Think of how much time we'd have collectively saved with this minor design change.

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m_0x|2 years ago

> All they had to do was make the connector have a non-symmetrical shape so that it's immediately obvious which way round it goes when you pick it up - you could do it without even looking. Think of how much time we'd have collectively saved with this minor design change.

I disagree. When connecting an HDMI cable I sometimes have issues, especially if in a weird angle.

However I do concede is faster to connect an HDMI than a USB

dylan604|2 years ago

Yeah, I want the connector that can be attached by only moving the TV a few inches, just enough to get my hand to fit and feel around, not something I have to rearrange the furniture for and break out some headlight to see which direction the cable is oriented. With BNC cables, I could do it with my eyes closed.

marcosdumay|2 years ago

The problem with the HDMI connector (well, the problem on topic here) is that it's almost rectangular. Just a pair of small chamfers doesn't cut it.

Display port has a much more usable design, with a chamfer that is about twice the size as HDMI.

somat|2 years ago

Right, the only thing worse than USB was the PS2 port. What sort of madness drive someone to invent a round connector that is keyed.

Hyperbole aside, there are some very good reasons to go with round connectors, it can be very strong and you can put a big nut on them to have an extremely secure lock. however the PS2 connector is nether of these things, It would require a much more robust key to work well.

The worst connector I ever encountered was on a old ATI capture card, it was the same barrel as a ps2 connector but had about 15 pins. Everything had to be perfect for it to insert, a tiny scratch or a slightly bent pin, it was not going anywhere.

antiterra|2 years ago

The PS/2 connector was just a mini version of DIN connectors from the mid 1900s. They were sometimes used for printers and floppy drives in place of wider parallel connectors. In general, once you knew where ‘up’ was you could figure out the orientation in a way that is still more intuitive than USB. XLR cables are similar and still widely used, but have more external cues as to their orientation.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/DIN_connector

akerr|2 years ago

I would line up the barrel and then rotate while pushing in until it plugged in. I don’t remember bending any pins. The mark on the top helped until the tower form factor turned the motherboard sideways. Still do this for XLR and MIDI but they’re more robust.

kergonath|2 years ago

> Right, the only thing worse than USB was the PS2 port. What sort of madness drive someone to invent a round connector that is keyed.

The Apple desktop bus (ADB) that was used for keyboards and mice in Mac-land was also round. They improved it by using asymmetrical plugs, which marginally helped.

stevage|2 years ago

Even having a bump on the rubber moulding as part of the standard would have solved the problem.

Smoosh|2 years ago

Heck, just making the plastic insert white instead of black (now sometimes blue, occasionally orange) would have helped.

rzzzt|2 years ago

The USB symbol goes on top, IIRC.

Edit: ninja'd by an enormous amount of people elsewhere in the thread, gah.

lttlrck|2 years ago

Right, don't make a non-reversible connector appear reversible... I would have thought this is Connector 101.

It's so bad it takes me 3 attempts to plug in USB-A blind, at least 50% of the time.

ilyt|2 years ago

other part of connector 101 is "put the springy bit on the cable, not socket, so when it wears out you replace a cable, not connector"

Given how Mini-USB looked I'm gotta say nobody there had any clue about designing connectors...

davidgay|2 years ago

That only works when you can see the place you're connecting to, or have used it many times.

I've definitely cursed many times failing to plug in non-rectangular VGA, serial and parallel cables ;)

[edit: it is still better, but not a panacea]

fennecfoxy|2 years ago

Tbf I think the most prevalent issue with USB was from people plugging them in where they cannot see the port properly, ie the back of a computer tower (most often) or back of TV/console etc.

Not really sure that that's USB's fault so much as a lack of front USB ports. I think in those cases the consumer can chose to get some sort of hub that's easier to access/can be pulled out from behind their setup.

Now that C exists though, idk if we really need to go much further. Connector much smaller than it is now will become fragile.

I've always thought they could add a single fiber core to USB cables for some "ultra high speed" standard, since USB4 is predicted to top out at 80GBps, but we could get 50Tbps or so over a single fiber if we really needed to.

But after owning several fiber cables, for networking and HDMI fiber based cables...yeah they're far, far too weak to replace copper. Just look at 'em wrong and they snap/break.

Plus tbf if we get 80gbps from usb4...the problem then becomes that we don't reaaaally have a use case for that speed. Maybe network adaptors, but beyond that...I mean a modern SSD will saturate that with a sequential read I suppose, but still.

themerone|2 years ago

They did that from the beginning with USB-B, but they never standardized an orientation.

kelnos|2 years ago

I guess it would be easier with the larger size of the USB-A connector, but I still struggle to plug in micro-USB cables sometimes, as it's still difficult to figure out its orientation at a glance.