Can Microsoft Fix USB-C's Tangled Mess?

Longtime readers know I love USB-C and I love dongles. I also love standards that don’t really go anywhere.

So it was with a broad smile on my face when I saw that Microsoft was attempting to fix the chaotic situation around USB-C that the company played no small part in creating. Essentially, here’s the deal: USB-C has made it easy to get a port of a consistent shape, but the problem is that not all ports are created equal.

Some support displays. Some don’t. Some are fast! Some aren’t. Some let you plug in an external GPU. Some don’t. But good luck figuring out which is which.

The truest comic about technology ever created? (via XKCD)

So Microsoft is aiming to change that by creating a new certification. You know, on top of all the other certifications that USB-C already has. XKCD’s famed “Standards” comic strip was built for moments like these.

But there is a point to all of this. Essentially, Microsoft is saying that if you’re going to claim that your device meets this USB speed standard, every port on the device needs to meet a minimum requirement. No more being stuck with display-out on only one of your USB-C ports. No more asking which of my ports supports faster 40-gigabyte connections.

As the company’s Ugan-Sivagnanenthirarajah writes on the company’s presumably well-trafficked Microsoft USB Blog:

We think it’s important for this clear branding to carry through to the actual customer experience with USB-C ports on Windows 11 PCs. While the USB specifications give PC manufacturers the ability to choose which optional features the port supports, we set out to establish a minimum bar for USB-C port capabilities on PCs.

Essentially, Microsoft is hoping that, by attaching the USB standards to the existing Windows Hardware Compatibility Program, it can essentially shame hardware manufacturers into doing the right thing with their USB ports.

This is a big change for Microsoft, which once decided to not support Thunderbolt on its Surface devices because of the potential of an obscure hardware breach that required long-term physical access to a device. It’s actually closer to what Apple has been doing in recent years. While the Cupertino crew no longer guarantees Thunderbolt on every single port (the Apple Silicon chips don’t have the bandwidth), it does tend to make it consistent. On the back of your Mac Mini, you’ll get Thunderbolt; on the front, it might be a slower USB-C standard that can still technically drive a monitor.

What spec do you think this USB-C cable supports? USB2, USB3, or USB4? (Marcus Urbenz/Unsplash)

Microsoft identified a problem. Does it have the solution?

XKCD jokes aside, there is a case for what Microsoft’s selling.

Recently, I got a hold of a refurbished Minisforum mini PC on a deep discount, and it’s mostly been pretty nice. I’ve been running it as a Steam machine. But I had some issues with the setup because of this port inconsistency. The device has multiple USB-C ports, but each of them does something different. One port is USB4-capable, and therefore can run my Thunderbolt dock, but the port only works with the dock after the machine has booted. If I need to make BIOS changes—which, given that I was setting up the machine, I was specifically trying to do—I have to unplug the keyboard to and plug in another one to get into the BIOS. Not exactly elegant.

But even older devices that do support Thunderbolt can have bizarre issues. My old HP Spectre has a Thunderbolt 3 port that, when plugged in, can run multiple monitors on that same Thunderbolt dock. However, it can’t power the input devices plugged into that dock. However, when I plug in the dock to a standard USB-C port, the input devices work—but the monitor doesn’t. And even stranger, when I plug it into another Thunderbolt dock, it doesn’t have any of these problems. (I run Linux on that machine, but I confirmed in my testing that this was also the case in Windows 11.)

All of this is more complicated than it sounds (there’s a reason, usually cost-based, why devices don’t have faster ports). But they’re right: It would just be better if every new device that comes out just supports a consistent version of USB-C by default. And yes, devices that support faster USB-C standards shouldn’t just limit it to a single port.

The first mainstream devices with USB-C ports—the Google Chromebook Pixel, the Nokia N1 tablet, and the Apple’s 12-inch MacBook, each announced in March 2015—are now a decade old. We can generally say that it’s nice that this port exists. It solved a lot of problems for regular consumers.

But it created some bugaboos. Many smartphones, for example, tend to only have USB-C ports that only support USB 2.0 speeds, and often don’t support video-out capabilities at a hardware level. You shouldn’t be forced to guess whether your device will just work if you want to plug it into your monitor.

Microsoft has a lot of clout. They could legitimately solve this problem. Or they could just become the next standard on the pile of failed standards. Ah well—at least we’re not stuck with Lightning anymore.

Nonstandard Links

This take on AI coding from Thomas Ptacek, a figure so prominent in Hacker News circles that he has a point count in the mid-six-digits, distills why it’s actually useful. It will upset critics, yes—I mean, just look at the title—but I think we’re never going to get out of our bad-AI-discourse rut without a few more pieces like this.

The YouTube channel Strange Parts has had a strange YouTube history. When it first emerged in 2017, its first video (an attempt to build an iPhone from scratch using parts from Shenzhen markets) was so unusual and popular that it made the channel famous overnight. But since then it’s slowed down a bit, with the pandemic complicating its original concept. But it recently had a gem—a tour of an Anker factory that’s responsible for a buzzy UV printer capable of textured 2D and 3D prints. It’s a sponsored video, but it’s the best one I’ve seen in a long time.

You should probably pay attention to the courts, where a lot is happening on the ISP liability for illegal downloads front.

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