alt Hacker NewsCable labeling could fix 99% of the issues with USB-C compat. The solution should never be blaming consumer for buying the wrong cable. Crappy two-wire charge-only cables are perfectly fine for something like a night desk lamp. Keep the poor cables, they are okay, just tell me if that's the case.
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> Cable labeling could fix 99% of the issues with USB-C compat.
Labelling is a poor band-aid on the root problem - consumer cables which look identical and fit identically should work wherever they fit.
There should never have been a power-only spec for USB-C socket dimensions.
If a cable supports both power and data, it must fit in all sockets. If a cable supports only power it must not fit into a power and data socket. If a cable supports only data, it should not fit into a power and data socket.
It is possible to have designed the sockets under these constraints, with the caveat that they only go in one way. I feel that that would have been a better trade-off. Making them reversible means that you cannot have a design which enforces cable type.
Two wire cables are not in the specification, just like A-to-A cables aren't. The whole charging above 100mA with resistor hacks wasn't in the standard either until they had to grandfather it in. The implementers forum isn't responsible for non-members breaking their spec.
Same thing with PNG. Just call the format with new additions it PNGX, so the user can clearly see that the reason their software can’t display the image is not a file corruption.
This is just pretending that if you have a cat and a dog in two bags and you call it “a bag”, it’s one and the same thing…