USB Couldn’t Be More Screwed Up (Premium)

In theory, modern implementations of the USB standard are a no-brainer, with ever-improving capabilities. In reality, USB today is a nightmare. It couldn’t possibly be more screwed up than it is.

What’s interesting is that I was thinking about writing this up before I even saw this week’s news about the USB Implementers Forum’s ham-handed rebranding of USB 3.0, 3.1, and 3.2. So, it is amazing to me that this new change will now make things even worse. But there it is.

USB is moving inexorably to the smaller and newer USB Type-C port, which is often just called USB-C. (That this port has multiple names was the first warning sign we ignored.) In fact, the latest version of the USB specification, which I will simply call USB 3.2 because I’m not insane like the decision-makers at the USB Implementers Forum, will only be delivered over this more modern port type.

That’s good. As an early proponent of USB-C, I’ve always seen the benefits of this reversible port type and of the broad acceptance that occurs when an industry rallies around a standard. In fact, I routinely rail against Microsoft’s continued hedging when it comes to USB-C in Surface, a lack of clarity and leadership that should make anyone question the software giant’s ability to make truly premium PCs.

USB-C ports enable smaller, thinner PCs. And they enable PCs to transfer data at ever-faster speeds, too. With version 3.2, those speeds will double from 10 Gbps to 20 Gbps.

That’s good too. It’s not as good as Thunderbolt 3, of course, another modern technology that Microsoft explicitly rejects in literally all of its Surface PCs: Of those scattered few Surface models that do include a USB-C port, none support the headier capabilities of Thunderbolt 3, which include faster 40 Gbps data transfer, advanced external video, external GPU support, and more.

Thunderbolt 3 is really good. But it also represents one of the many ways in which USB is screwed up. Even on PCs that do support Thunderbolt 3 capabilities, many only do so via some of the USB-C ports they contain. So it’s up to the user to figure out which port does what. Some have Thunderbolt 3, some do not.

That’s bad. It’s really bad.

USB is screwed up on mobile, too. With most of the industry (read: everyone but Apple) moving to USB-C for power charging, data transfer, and capabilities, you’d think we’d immediately see the benefits of a single standard. But USB-C got off to a bad start on mobile because it’s not possible to tell what any given cable (or port) can do just by looking at it. And in many cases, there were cheap cables that only offered a subset of functionality or, worse, could even harm the internal components of certain PCs and mobile devices when attached.

That … sucks. But with those problems mostly solved today, we’re entering a new era of USB hell on mobile thanks to another industry-wide trend: The removal of the headphone jack from most modern smartphones, especially in the premium part of the market where every millimeter of thinness is considered an advantage. Phones with no headphone jack require users to adopt wireless headphones, which have their own battery life and charging issues. Or use a dongle.

And both of those options really suck.

I’ve spent a ton of time and lots of money buying (and in many cases returning) wireless headphones, trying to find something, anything, that offers the noise-canceling prowess and sound quality of the Bose QuietComfort 25 Acoustic Noise Cancelling Headphones that I love so much. And while I’ve found a few options that aren’t bad, none come even close the Bose I prefer.

And that’s not even the worst problem.

The biggest problem with USB-C on mobile is that these modern phones require a dongle to attach standard headphones, and those dongles are not universally compatible.

Think about that for a second.

If I want to use the Bose headphones with my review unit Huawei Mate 20 Pro, I have to use the dongle that Huawei provided. That dongle does not work with my Google Pixel 2 XL: In that case, I have to use Google’s dongle. And I have, or have had, other phones through here, each with its own matrix of dongle compatibility. I never even tried to keep it straight. But it’s a stupid, stupid—and, I think, avoidable—problem. Of USB’s making.

By comparison, Apple’s proprietary Lightning connector is reversible like USB-C, but it’s even smaller, allowing for even thinner phones, at least theoretically. It also provides a much more secure grip on the cable than does USB-C, which I like. And unlike USB-C, it always works. Always. You may or may not be OK with dongles, but when you use a Lightning dongle with normal headphones, there are never any issues. It’s no wonder that Apple has rejected USB-C on iPhone.

What is a wonder is that Apple has decided to switch its iPad Pro to USB-C. I believe this was done to drive home the fact that the iPad Pro is more computer than tablet, but that’s just marketing nonsense: There are no new iPad Pro capabilities that take advantage of features unique to USB-C. Everything it does could be done over Lightning. In fact, one of the big complaints about the new iPad Pros is that they don’t go far enough in this direction, and allow its users to utilize those USB-C ports like they can on PCs and Macs.

Add this all up and you can see the problem. There was supposed to be this one thing, called USB, and it was supposed to always work. Instead, what we have is a single port, which can have any number of capabilities, with no clear way to know what’s possible. That’s worse than having multiple ports. That all of this was easily avoidable makes USB both a joke and a nightmare that we collectively have to deal with every single day. It’s unbelievable.