Google Engineer Warns Against Perils of Buying Cheap, Third-Party USB-C Cables (hothardware.com) 206
MojoKid writes: A USB-C cable is just a cable. Or is it? Google engineer Benson Leung noted today that it's definitely not the case. Leung and his teammates at Google work inside of the Chromebook ecosystem, and as such, they've had lots of hands-on experience with USB-C cables. The Chromebook Pixel remains one of the very few notebooks on the market that directly supports USB-C. Nonetheless, in his experience, not all cables are built alike, and in some cases, cheap out-of-spec cables could potentially cause damage to your device. It's such a big problem, in fact, that Leung began buying cables off of Amazon and leaving his feedback on each one. Ultimately, what the problem boils down to is that some of the specifications in a cable may be not well controlled. He notes that in some bad cables, resistor values are incorrect, throwing off power specs wildly — 3A vs 2A in one example.
Just like HDMI cables (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Just like HDMI cables (Score:4, Funny)
There is too much Ether in the cheap cables.
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OMG. You mean I can get high by huffing really cheap ethernet cables. sweet!
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The oxygen slows down the bits.
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But digital signals will either give you an error or they won't - they either work or they don't. If you get zero errors with a 6' crappy oxidized cable then it is objectively and subjectively just as good as the 6' oxygen free magic gold-plated cable.
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But digital signals will either give you an error or they won't - they either work or they don't.
Not completely accurate. There is an area where the cable works but is so crusty that huge amounts of error correction is needed. Then it occasionally goes over the edge and there are random dropouts. If the situation gets even worse, ultimately the signal goes beyond repair and then you get nothing.
If you get zero errors with a 6' crappy oxidized cable then it is objectively and subjectively just as good as the 6' oxygen free magic gold-plated cable.
Sure, but generally there is a higher chance to get more errors with an oxidized cable. A nice and clean high-quality cable has more headroom. Even digital signal is ultimately transported in physical analog wor
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Then it occasionally goes over the edge and there are random dropouts.
That would fall into the "doesn't work" category.
A nice and clean high-quality cable has more headroom.
If you are stretching the limits of the technology you are using, you may need the headroom. An audio signal through a 6' cord will not come anywhere close. If we're talking ethernet, then yeah - you might have trouble after dozens of meters (close to the 100 meter spec) at gigabit speeds. If you are talking HDMI, maybe 10 meters or so for 4k video. Lower bandwidth will have less strenuous requirements. If you have no dropouts, it's working fine. You can run
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If any of these three things are lacking, you'll end up with a crappy cable assembly that will fail you in one way or ano
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which is why i only buy Gold plated, oxygen free, twisted pair, sheathed Monster cables for $99.99 each. I can see the difference
On a serious note, I have personal experience with Monster USB *2* cables (they were the only 10-foot ones I could find on short notice) being absolutely horrible. Data errors all over the damn place (I write some USB drivers, so I can get a better look at what's actually happening than most). Actually worse than a $2 off-brand obviously-too-thin conductors mail-order piece of junk (which didn't work either, but...) So it's not only that they're not "better" in some esoteric sense, they're actually much wor
Re:Just like HDMI cables (Score:5, Interesting)
Having a cable format dependent on a resistor in the cable sounds like a poor design to me.
++ since it could damage hardware.
Re:Just like HDMI cables (Score:5, Informative)
Using sense resistors in cables or charger plugs is pretty much universal and works very well. That's how phones tell the difference with between a "standard" 500mA USB port and a 2A high power charger. If the phone tried to draw 2A off a 500mA supply, odds are all the magic blue smoke would get out... (See http://blog.curioussystem.com/... [curioussystem.com])
There's nothing wrong with sense resistors when the cables are manufactured properly. The problem is if the manufacturer puts the wrong resistors in because they don't know any better or because they're cheap and they're trying to cheat with cheaper components. In the case of USB 2 stuff, pulling 2A from a 500mA brick probably wouldn't end too well. For USB-C, if you try to pull 3A+ over a wire that's only rated for 500mAh... Well... Most likely what you've got there is a 3 meter long fuse... If you're lucky, the power supply will fail safely before the heat from the additional current ignites anything.
Or more realistically, you may find the laptop gets flaky when it adjusts its power management to assume it can draw a particular amount of power from the cord only to fall short when power demands reach peak levels.
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Couldn't the voltage drop be calculated and an unsafe draw detected? Seems like a better system to me then trusting a resistor which could be wrong or a cable that doesn't meet the current spec it is advertised for.
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It could, but that means additional components, and thus additional cost. The margins in consumer electronics are usually razor-thin, except for Apple.
Re: Just like HDMI cables (Score:2)
You'd run the risk of overloading power supplies that way. Most phones can draw from 500mA to 2A+ these days. You wouldn't see problems until you tried to pull at maximum power, and at that point the first "problem" may well be magic blue smoke.
The sense resistors let the device know in advance what the maximum safe draw is before they damage the supply (which might be the motherboard of your computer, not just a $5 wall wart from the gas station).
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The power source should be doing that, never the cable. How does the cable know what type of voltage source it's plugged into? The cable should never have the resistors in it, the power source should.
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Yes, if you programmed your device with the characteristics of every possible USB power supply and cable combination that will ever be made.
On a more practical level though, no.
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Wrong in every way ... You really don't know anything about USB and yet you're modded to +5 ... wtf slashdot.
Using sense resistors in cables or charger plugs is pretty much universal and works very well. That's how phones tell the difference with between a "standard" 500mA USB port and a 2A high power charger. If the phone tried to draw 2A off a 500mA supply, odds are all the magic blue smoke would get out...
Or not. USB spec requires a poly fuse. No blue smoke for anything that matches the spec. Try again.
Also in this case the value of the resister is unimportant because it only signals that the cable supports a higher capacity, it doesn't signify or control WHAT that is. If the resister exist, the device knows it can draw more power without blowing the poly fuse. The resister is not in series with
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Having a cable format dependent on a resistor in the cable sounds like a poor design to me.
++ since it could damage hardware.
If your motivation is to lock customers into your ecosystem then you do this in as proprietary a fashion as you can get away with.
So for the business, it's a great design.
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ATTR{idDevice}
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You know, those crazy things that just don't work and stuff nobody has ever thought of before.
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You mean like the serial number that the USB specification forgot to mandate must be different in each device, so manufacturers just didn't bother and now operating systems have to treat plugging in the same device a second time as plugging in a brand new device because even though everything is identical, the device might not be?
Re: Just like HDMI cables (Score:5, Insightful)
How do you handle backwards compatibility with devices or chargers that can't follow the new communications protocol?
Perhaps you think you are smarter than the engineers that designed USB-C and USB 3.1, but I do not.
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Communicating using a resistor instead of a chip is:
. cheaper
. more reliable
. takes up less space
etc.
If you think a chip would be better for this you are really shitty at engineering...
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Also, if anyone thinks that idiot manufacturers (trying to save a few pennies) will screw up a simple resistor but will not screw up a chip, then I'm not sure what to say. A main reason we need smarts in the cables are because cheap chargers are not made with enough safety features or predate high-charge devices.
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I haven't seen any that are smaller, cheaper, or more reliable than a resistor.
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My thoughts exactly. If the cable's not captive then what's to stop you mixing them up?
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Except your story doesn't make any sense here. I've read some of the reviews and using a 10K resister isn't cheaper than using a 56K resister, it is simply wrong and dangerous.
The part isn't cheaper, but the employee that made that mistake is cheaper than the one who wouldn't have. Labor costs are part of a product cost.
Re: Ah yes, a cable... (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re:Just like HDMI cables (Score:5, Informative)
I bought one of the bad cables, and was wondering why my wall charger was flaking out. Went online, and saw the issue -- my phone was trying to pull too much juice, overloading the charger and putting it into brownout mode. Now, this is a 4-port wall charger, so my other 3 connected devices were sitting there going charging/not charging/not charging at sub 1 second intervals for the ten minutes that it took me to figure it out. After that, my charger was acting really finicky, and I didn't trust it anymore after that current overload so I junked it. So, yea. Not overblown. Actual problem.
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I didn't trust it anymore after that current overload so I junked it. So, yea. Not overblown. Actual problem.
You do realize that sentence completely contradicts itself right? Look, I'll make it even simpler for you:
I didn't trust it anymore after that current overload so I junked it.
Thats pretty much the definition of overblown
Re: Just like HDMI cables (Score:2, Informative)
You may not notice the quality difference with cheap analogue cables, but it is there. A bad quality digital cable will just not work, or be choppy as you noticed. That's why some say that cheap digital cables are okay, if it seems to work okay it likely is; that until they start becoming more than a cable.
Watch out for Bad Connectors Too (Score:5, Informative)
I bought a few packs of USB-C male and female connectors from China (to use for a non-USB application) and they were really junk. Looked like USB-C but the tolerances were terrible. Too soon for competitive quality forces to have kicked in, I suppose, but they didn't just make these bad connectors to annoy me - they must be out there in the wild too.
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1. Manufacturer cranks out millions of out-of-tolerance parts
2. Manufacturer dumps them on the market for cheap to get rid of them
3. Designers can't resist the shiny cheapness, design the faulty part in to their assembly
4. Manufacturer gets order shock and starts cranking out parts again without any leeway to retool
5. We have to replace our USB 2.0 m
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I bought a few packs of USB-C male and female connectors from China (to use for a non-USB application) and they were really junk.
NO WAY?!?!?!?! You bought cheap Chinese knockoffs and they were shit?!?!?! how can that be?! Thats never happened before ... EVER?!?!?!?!
Turn in your geek card and 4 digit UID Bill, you just lost your creds.
Why have they not tried this? (Score:2)
How am I sure they have not done that yet?
OMG, how am I sure the they != us, I mean us by proxy, the NSA ??
Re:Why have they not tried this? (Score:4, Informative)
The answer to this is: They have. I'm sure that you'll find sources if you google.
I'm not so sure about cables, but exploit devices have been found in usb chargers in airports.
To name one major example (Score:2)
The Chromebook Pixel remains one of the very few notebooks on the market that directly supports USB-C.
Much like how RC Cola remains one of the very few brand-name colas on the market...
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Nope. If you're going to go third-party soda, go Cheerwine.
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Nope. If you're going to go third-party soda, go Cheerwine.
Good luck getting Cheerwine outside of the Carolinas.
And if you want to go even more obscure with soda you should go with Dr Enuf.
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It has a pretty large following in north-central IL. I remember being able to get it there. Never been to the Carolinas, but I've had Cheerwine more than a few times. Given that there's no bottler in IL or any north-neighboring state, I have no idea where it came from.
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You can buy Cheerwine at grocery stores in Texas, but it's the glass bottled, boutique six-packs, just like the Dr. Pepper made with real sugar (AKA "Dublin Dr. Pepper"). You can also find the same six-packs at most, if not all, Cracker Barrel restaurants.
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Moxie. No, blissfully not a cola.
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Another Moxie fan? There's a Moxie Fest in Lisbon Falls, Maine. Yes, yes I have been there. Vanilla ice cream and Moxie - it makes an excellent float.
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Moxie makes most everything excellent...
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I usually run in the race (I'm old but I spent eight years as a Marine) and I bring a car down to show. I don't know where you are but if you're interested in the festival, I'll buy you all the Moxie you and your family can drink if you show up. I'll be actively campaigning then, even though it's a long way from my district. Depending on which car I bring, I might even let you drive it!
http://moxiefestival.com/ [moxiefestival.com]
Come on up! I don't know where you're geographically located but, unless you're in Maine, I'm not
Re: To name one major example (Score:2)
I live in Gilbert Arizona now, and we go back to Ogunquit each summer. I have one Moxie left in the fridge.
I was born in Bangor, moved south to Portland etc., married, moved to Arizona 10 years ago. In South Portland we had prolific high bush blueberries, regular trips to Ferry Beach, lobster rolls out to Pine Point.
What you running for? I can't vote for ya, but msg me.
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Were I home, I'd offer to send you a six pack. I am not. I have three left. I'm running for State Senate. I'm way up north, though. Technically, North West. I'm up above Rangeley. You want a ballot? I'll get you a ballot... (No, that was my attempt at humor. This should not now, nor ever, be taken as anything other than one of my poorly worded jokes.)
LSJ finds this and I'm so not getting elected. Meh... I'm okay with that. If they can't handle humor then I sure as hell don't think they'll want me to represe
Re: To name one major example (Score:2)
Not a lot above Rangely. I try to explain to people the horrible cell coverage. No phones. Good luck on the election!
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Yeah, it's kind of funny. I had someone telling me that I had ubiquitous cell phone coverage - here on Slashdot, and that this is universal across the United States and Europe. If I go about 30 minutes from my house, it's then a 2.5 hour drive before I have service again. Yup. Ubiquity at its finest.
I have broadband because I paid for the individual lines (and covered my neighbors by passing their house, but one paid for an extra mile) and a CO so that I can actually have DSL. It's actually not bad - 13 Mb/
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That's not a cola.
Was already a problem with USB 2.0 (Score:2)
Whenever a USB cable is used for charging, it's very easy to see why cheap cables are cheap.
A quest for a cable that can support full 1.2A charging, not to mention current generation fast-charging, can be a long and frustrating one. I prefer my chargers to have 1.8m cables instead of manufacturer-standard 1m, and it took a lot of tries to find one that doesn't suck.
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http://smile.amazon.com/s/ref=... [amazon.com]
Properly made cables and chargers. They sell 2.4 A chargers for cellphones and cables that are well made.
In case the link gets all screwed up, it is a link to an Amazon search for Anker.
Waiting for the inevitable clusterf__k (Score:4, Insightful)
USB-C could have been such an awesome standard. But when I read about all the possible feature variations (http://www.kitguru.net/desktop-pc/anton-shilov/not-all-usb-type-c-ports-are-equal-nine-implementations-of-usb-c-incoming/), I can only shake my head. While it's very cool, especially with integrated thunderbolt support, the idea of splitting it into different versions is just gonna cause nightmares.
We're going to enter an age where people tear their hair out because everyone has the same port, but one person can do one thing with it but another person cannot. The whole HDMI versions confusion is gonna look tame compared to the confusion USB C will cause.
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That's why I'll keep using old-school serial and parallel ports forever!
Wait... I mean old-school, 19200 bps DB-9 serial ports and full-duplex centronics parallel ports... I guess things weren't simple back then either.
Fight for your bitcoins! [coinbrawl.com]
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True... things were messy in the past, but at least you knew that, "Different connector, therefore different thing". A perfect example of what happens when that failed, was the whole 25-pin parallel vs SCSI connector. That was a lovely mess, up until IDE came about and wiped SCSI out of the consumer market.
There is absolutely no reason why they had to repeat the confusion with USB-C & 3.1. They should have just said "USB-C = USB 3.1", and that was it. Throw in some adapters for compatibility, and we
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Those only matter if you use the auxiliary pins. If you're just using it as a straight up USB cable, any cable will do.
The confusion happens if you want to plug in a device that use the auxiliary pins, and even then, the
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While it's very cool, especially with integrated thunderbolt support, the idea of splitting it into different versions is just gonna cause nightmares.
How is that any different to what we have now? All of my laptop USB ports have funny little symbols next to them. Some of them are even quite non-standard with the ability to provide power while the device is off etc.
The reality is going to be quite different. While you have all the different standards devices are likely to ship with one single type. Then it will not be a case of carefully investigating each individual port but rather thinking "does my laptop support displayport over USB or not?" A question
Google should solve this by flooding the market.. (Score:2)
I asked an expert (Score:2, Funny)
Benson is a pretty fantastic engineer (Score:5, Informative)
Benson is a pretty fantastic engineer. He dots the i's and crosses the t's, which is somewhat rare these days.
I hope Puneet (if Puneet is still his manager, as he was Benson's and mine, when I worked with Benson) is having Google pay for the cables he's buying, instead of Benson paying for them out of pocket.
In any case, definitely take his Amazon reviews to heart: he knows what the hell he is doing, and he knows which end is the probe and which end goes in the meter. If he says a cable sucks, it sucks, and if he says it's good, it's good.
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Yea, because Terry Lambert is a stranger that no one knows or trusts ... I mean, I've only known who he was without ever meeting him for the last 20 years ...
https://www.linkedin.com/pub/t... [linkedin.com]
Turn in your geek card karmawhore.
Why are resistors needed in a cable? (Score:3, Insightful)
Seems to me that it would be a faulty design that requires a 'cable' to need any electronics at all.
Just like anything with a jack, you can't really trust anything that may get plugged into it.
Wires, wrapping, and shielding, sure. Electronics (caps, resistors, etc.) should be in the devices themselves, and devices when encountering bad cables should always fail 'safe'.
Re:Why are resistors needed in a cable? (Score:4, Informative)
yea, the problem is that they are not just cables, they are adapters. They adapt from USB-A to USB-C. As an adapter, they need the proper resister to tell the USB-C connected device how much power they can draw.
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Seems to me that it would be a faulty design that requires a 'cable' to need any electronics at all.
In that case USB 3.1 must be a terrible design. A full spec cable doesn't just require a resistor or two, it needs a PCB: http://cache-www.belkin.com/resources/img/overview/f2cu029/USB-C_CableExploded_v01-r01.png [belkin.com]. That cable is only rated for 3A. A full spec cable can carry 5A. I'm surprised they only cost $20.
Mind you, I'm not complaining. $20 sounds like a cheap price to pay if I get to throw out the rats nest of cables I carry around now.
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Because the devices at either end have capabilities that can exceed some cables. A method for identification of cables is then required.
This is really no different than wiring in the house, except that in your house the electrician needs to read up a code book to determine how to protect the cable at the time of installation. How many people will dig out a compatibility book before plugging USB device into USB device with USB cable just to make sure the smoke doesn't come out?
We asked for this. We wanted th
usb 3 similar problems (Score:5, Interesting)
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I worked on the first usb 3.0's for Apple. Same problem. We ended up buying nearly every different cable we could find and doing a tolerance study. Things varied so widely that the mouse i was using on my workstation was out of spec!
Where did you find a USB 3.0 mouse? Mine all use USB 1.something.
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They don't.
not really fair (Score:3)
well, we wouldnt have to buy third party cables if google actually gave us cables with the products we buy. i got myself a nexus 5x when it came out. it came with 1 3 ft usb-c to usb-c cable and no adapter to normal usb. i couldnt even plug the damned thing into my computer until the cables i ordered off amazon got here.
Here's his list (Score:5, Informative)
Here's the list of cables that he tested, from the TFA. There are ten of them
http://amzn.to/1MlG3g3
Reminds me of the Prolific USB-serial converters (Score:2)
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A decade or so ago the company I worked at had to repeatedly advise customers to use FTDI or Silicon Labs based USB-serial converters with our products. It got to the point that it was the first question on the tech support script. The cheaper converters based on Prolific chipsets were incredibly unreliable but customers kept buying them because on ebay one converter appears much the same as another.
There were a lot of counterfeit prolifics out there, so it isn't specifically a prolific problem. It's kind of like blaming Apple for the cheap fake iphone chargers.
But yeah, if you can get a USB-Serial converter for 3 bucks, it might not be too good.
I use FTDI mostly now, but have a few of the real prolifics setting around and in use. Including an ancient one that was used for a palm device, and still works in Linux even though Windows doesn't support it at all any more.
Cheap Cables (Score:2)
On the other hand, I bought a cheap iphone cable on ebay that completely destroyed my iphone5. Not good.
Moral of the story? It's probably best to stay away from cheap cables.
Re:The legendary Chinese contempt for tolerances (Score:5, Interesting)
Like health inspectors checking restaurants for bad food or procedures, isn't there an independent company that can randomly test and certify USB cables?
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If people don't like getting salmonella poisoning, they'll post bad reviews on Yelp. Another win for the invisibul holy ghost hand of the market !!!
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Would you buy a usb cable if some Joe wrote on his blog it worked for him and he rates it five stars (would buy again)?
Re:The legendary Chinese contempt for tolerances (Score:4, Interesting)
What's the difference between Joe's blog and Amazon.com customer reviews?
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Name brands don't mean nearly as much as they used to.
Re:Have to agree, same as HDMI1/2/3 (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem is that the average Joe has no way to judge true quality at the time of purchase. It seems the best he can do is perhaps not buy the absolute cheapest. But what about one step up in price from that? Is that "good enough", or still junk? This is a basic flaw in capitalism: for it to work "best", the consumer must know what he is buying. In a world with unknowable and constantly changing suppliers for components, what was a "good" quality product one year could easily become "junk" next year.
Known "quality" brands that cost more would seem to be the answer to this problem, but they face pressure to lower costs in order to increase profits, so this doesn't seem to be a permanent answer either...
In the face of this, people just buy cheap, since they can't judge quality, hope it doesn't break, and when it does, just buy another cheap one. Explained in this link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Market_for_Lemons
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he problem is that the average Joe has no way to judge true quality at the time of purchase.
Price is often pretty telling.
Buying from a company with reputable warranty and customer service is also quite telling.
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I doubt you can show me a cable that I can't tell you just buy looking at it and feeling it, what the quality is.
Does the sheath feel cheap, thin and plasticy or thick and rubbery? How does the connector plastic feel in your hand? How does it look? Are the logos painted on properly? Are they already starting to scrap off because the are so cheap before you open the package/use the cable?
Does it cost $0.99 and you're buying it in a gas station? Are you buying it from Amazon?
You can tell if you bother t
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My phone's car dock comes with a cable that has resistors in it signal the dock is connected.
Purpose specific. Works. Your premise is invalid, for any reason. Resistors are sometimes signalling devices in USB, and why would USB-C make more sense?
This is the HDMI and Lightning debacle all over again, to soak us for $.
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Re:Resistors in a cable? (Score:5, Insightful)
Gods no. The important thing is that the cable be capable of carrying the current the device requests. If the resistors were just in the device, then it would have no idea if the cable you've used to connect it to the hub is thick enough to carry the current it is about to draw.
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Gods no. The important thing is that the cable be capable of carrying the current the device requests. If the resistors were just in the device, then it would have no idea if the cable you've used to connect it to the hub is thick enough to carry the current it is about to draw.
Or you could just make all USB-C cables capable of carrying the max current that the USB-C standard supports.
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In the Android world Cyanogen is merely the best known of the ROM makers. Buy a phone you can root.
Apple users, sit back and enjoy the movies,.
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so with apple using a non apple cable / adapters voids warranty.
And where did you read that?
Also the new mac pro will only have USB-C ports and X2 Ethernet. Ships with no adapters.
Why is it you always post factually incorrect things about Apple products, especially in a post that is not about Apple. First of all, the new Mac Pro has no USB-C ports. It has 4 USB 3.0 ports. Second, it does not have "only" USB and Ethernet. It has 4 USB 3.0, 6 Thunderbolt 2 ports, 1 HDMI port, 1 digital out/ analog line out port, 1 headphone port. Essentially half your list of adapters is not required.
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I think he may have been confusing it with the macbook non-pro, which has been criticized for a severe lack of ports - a consequence of Apple's quest to make it as thin and light as possible.
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Was talking about the upcoming new mac pro and how bad it may be.
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There is some info in the one of files as part of a new mac os update pointing to a 10 usb-c port mac. With a name that is like the mac pro out now.
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I mentioned them in a comment to this [google.com] post yesterday:
Benson Leung Yesterday 8:27 AM
I have it on good authority that Monoprice's cables and accessories are compliant. I need to write a review though, maybe in a few days.
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I have a Nexus 5X and some Monoprice A-to-C cables. The 5X correctly detects that it's connected to a legacy USB 2 connection via a type A connector, and tells me it's charging slowly.