Via Jason Snell


https://9to5mac.com/2021/10/20/macbook-pro-usb-c-ports-charging/

Apparently the only port that (partially) supports the very new 3.1 EPR spec is the USB-C port on the actual Apple charger. On the 16” new laptop the only port (according to the above reports) that can handle the full power flow is the MagSafe port.

Which means that when USB-C EPR cables do become available the max charge speed with this model of Apple laptop will still need to use that Apple specific MagSafe cable.

Worse than I thought then. USB is such a nightmare.

This is such a mess. I had such high hopes for USB C. It's a great form factor, and has such wide adoption that even Apple got on board. But these little fiddly differences that are completely impossible for the average consumer to figure out are going to cause such problems. If we struggle with it, there's no way most of my clients will be able to handle it.

From the sound of it, Apple didn't really get on board. They added new incompatibilities to it all, and then got on board with THAT.

Before USB came about it was bad. Many of us remember struggling with dozens of cables and connector variables, chargers, power adapters, video, serial, parallel, SCSI, PS/2, Firewire, and on and on - proprietary stuff everywhere and myriad ‘standards’.

USB is better than that. But the USB standards group itself is quite a mess, spawning a multitude of variations and incompatible dead-ends. And so many different version names and USB related logos.

USB 3.1 physical B connectors were weird.
ThunderBolt before the USB-C connector was sorta proprietary

USB-C holds (held?) such great promise. One connector, works everywhere.
And ThunderBolt was going to be the superset ‘standard’, driven by Intel, supported by the Windows OEMs and Apple. And we sorta got there.

Alas, here we go again with more USB-C variations and versions.

Yeah I can't argue with that. I still remember the relief I felt when I stopped having to support clients who had PS/2 connections on their desktops. Those things were garbage.


I guess that's the thing of it, isn't it? We keep oscillating between mess and improvement, and it feels like each time we're getting a little closer, so I guess on the whole it's getting better. Still frustrating when you get to the point in the curve where it's messy again.

Whippersnappers. Back in the day we had HP-IB and HIL and life was good...

IEEE-488 devices and Commodore PET computers ‘controlling’ them. Been there, did that. Designed and manufactured IEEE-488 interface cards (along with a lot of other add-on hardware things).

Those cables were hefty and the connectors were often double sided, sturdy molded things but rather fragile leaf style contacts.

I used only the HP cables, those ends were metal and not fragile.

HIL was the best, I had a bunch of HIL accessories, too bad it didn't really go anywhere.

Reading into some of the details, it isn't just the cable that is different for the 240W EPR standard. The connectors are also tweaked in design, with differences in some of the pin lengths to reduce arcing on unplugging.