USB C应该简化我们的生活，而不是一团糟

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Techies hailed USB-C as the future of cables when it hit the mainstream market with Apple’s single-port MacBook in 2015. It was a huge improvement over the previous generation of USB, allowing for many different types of functionality — charging, connecting to an external display, etc. — in one simple cord, all without having a “right side up” like its predecessor.

T echies在2015年将USB-C推向苹果单端口MacBook主流市场时，就将其誉为电缆的未来 。它是对上一代USB的巨大改进，支持许多不同类型的功能-充电，连接至外部显示器等-一根简单的线，都没有像其前代产品那样“右侧朝上”。

Five years later, USB-C is near-ubiquitous: Almost every modern laptop and smartphone has at least one USB-C port, with the exception of the iPhone, which still uses Apple’s proprietary Lightning port. For all its improvements, USB-C has become a mess of tangled standards — a nightmare for consumers to navigate despite the initial promise of simplicity.

五年后，USB-C是近泛素Ø我们：几乎每一个现代的笔记本电脑和智能手机有至少一个USB-C端口，与iPhone，仍然采用了苹果独有的闪电接口的除外。 尽管进行了所有改进，USB-C却变成了混乱的标准—尽管最初提出了简单性的承诺，但对于消费者而言，这是一场噩梦。

Anyone going all-in on USB-C will run into problems with an optional standard called Power Delivery. The standard allows devices to charge at a much higher wattage relative to older connectors, therefore allowing them to charge faster. But it requires the right combination of charger, cables, and device to actually achieve this.

任何人全神贯注于USB-C都会遇到名为Power Delivery的可选标准的问题。 与旧的连接器相比，该标准允许设备以更高的功率充电，因此允许它们更快地充电。 但这需要正确组合充电器，电缆和设备才能实现。

If you buy a USB-C charger that doesn’t support Power Delivery and try to use it with a Microsoft Surface, for example, the laptop will complain that it’s “not charging” despite receiving some power. Fixing this requires figuring out whether or not it’s the cable or wall charger that doesn’t support Power Delivery, and replacing it with something that does support it. There would be no way for a layperson to hold two USB-C chargers and know the difference between one that supports Power Delivery and one that doesn’t.

例如，如果您购买了不支持Power Delivery的USB-C充电器，并尝试将其与Microsoft Surface配合使用，则笔记本电脑会抱怨说，尽管获得了一些电源，但它仍在“不充电”。 要解决此问题，需要弄清楚是否电缆或壁式充电器不支持Power Delivery ，并用支持它的东西替换它。 外行人无法容纳两个USB-C充电器，也不知道一个支持Power Delivery和一个不支持Power Delivery。

How any normal person is supposed to grasp this soup of standards, built atop a single port that looks the same, is anyone’s guess.

任何人都应该猜测，正常人应该如何理解建立在看起来相同的单个端口上的标准标准。

Furthering the confusion, some devices actually can’t be charged with chargers supporting Power Delivery, despite sporting a USB-C port — because they weren’t designed to negotiate the higher wattage being delivered by the Power Delivery standard. A pair of cheap Anker headphones I own, for example, refuse to charge when plugged into a MacBook charger. Other devices, like the Nintendo Switch, only partially support the standard, and some unsupported chargers have bricked devices, reportedly due to the Switch’s maximum voltage being exceeded.

更令人困惑的是，某些设备实际上无法 尽管具有USB-C端口，但仍应使用支持Power Delivery的充电器充电-因为它们的设计目的不是为了协商Power Delivery标准所提供的更高功率。 例如，我拥有的一双便宜的Anker耳机在插入MacBook充电器时拒绝充电。 其他设备(如Nintendo Switch)仅部分 支持此标准，据报道，由于超出了交换机的最大电压 ，一些不受支持的充电器具有砖形设备。

Then there’s DisplayPort and Thunderbolt, another set of standards supported by some USB-C devices. DisplayPort allows the use of an external display, such as a 4K monitor, but only supports one at a time at full resolution.

然后是DisplayPort和Thunderbolt，这是某些USB-C设备支持的另一组标准。 DisplayPort允许使用外部显示器，例如4K显示器，但仅支持一个 一次以全分辨率显示。

Thunderbolt, yet another optional standard, is a much faster layer on top of USB-C that allows additional possibilities, like the use of multiple displays daisy-chained from a single port, or the use of an external graphics card. It uses the exact same connector, but can be identified with an additional “lightning” symbol when supported.

Thunderbolt是另一个可选标准，是USB-C上更快的一层，它提供了更多的可能性，例如使用从单个端口以菊花链形式连接的多个显示器，或使用外部图形卡。 它使用完全相同的连接器，但如果受支持，则可以使用附加的“闪电”符号进行标识。

While DisplayPort is relatively universal on devices with USB-C ports, Thunderbolt support is a patchwork and requires both devices being plugged in to support it. Apple’s modern MacBooks support Thunderbolt, for example, but Microsoft’s new Surface Book 3 doesn’t. Monitors with Thunderbolt support also tend to be more expensive than those without, because they’re able to support more devices and additional monitors without slowing down.

虽然DisplayPort在具有USB-C端口的设备上相对通用，但是Thunderbolt支持是一个拼凑而成的过程，并且要求插入两个设备以支持它。 例如，Apple的现代MacBook支持Thunderbolt，而Microsoft的新Surface Book 3不支持 。 具有Thunderbolt支持的显示器也往往比不具有Thunderbolt的显示器贵，因为它们能够支持更多设备和其他显示器而不会降低速度。

If that sounds good, and you’re excited about Thunderbolt like I was recently, there’s another catch: Individual Thunderbolt ports are not equal. The standard allows for 40Gbps of throughput on the port, but some device makers only implement it partially, with 20Gbps of throughput, which limits how you’re able to use it.

如果听起来不错，并且您像我最近一样对Thunderbolt感到兴奋，那么还有另一个问题：单个Thunderbolt端口不是 等于。 该标准允许端口上的吞吐量达到40Gbps，但是有些 设备制造商仅以20Gbps的吞吐量实现了部分实施，这限制了您使用它的方式。

Despite working in the tech industry and having a deep interest in gadgets, I tripped over this recently when trying to buy a new monitor: I wanted to be able to chain two of them off a single port and discovered that I’d not only need to buy a specific screen to achieve this (which was more expensive), but this would only work with my work MacBook Pro, and not my brand-new Surface Book 3.

尽管在技术行业工作，并对小工具产生了浓厚的兴趣，但最近在尝试购买新显示器时还是跳了一下：我希望能够将其中两个从单个端口链接起来，发现我不仅需要购买特定的屏幕来实现这一目标(价格更高)，但这仅适用于我的工作MacBook Pro，而不适用于全新的Surface Book 3。

How any normal person is supposed to grasp this soup of standards, built atop a single port that looks the same, is anyone’s guess. Having a single, universal port on the majority of my devices is a godsend, but it feels like spinning the wheel every time I plug something in: Will it behave the way I expect? If it’s this difficult for me, I’m not sure how the average person will know how to figure out what’s wrong.

任何人都应该猜测，正常人应该如何理解建立在看起来相同的单个端口上的标准标准。 我的大多数设备上只有一个通用端口，这真是天赐良机，但是每次插入电源时，感觉就像在转动轮子：它会按我期望的方式运行吗？ 如果这对我来说很困难，我不知道普通人怎么知道如何找出问题所在。

There is some hope in the future with USB 4, which the USB Implementers Forum (USB-IF) announced in 2019. The new standard uses the same USB-C connector, and is actually built on top of Thunderbolt, which will help resolve a large amount of confusion and offer fast speeds universally. But, like with previous versions of USB, getting devices certified will remain optional, and there’s no clear plan for how consumers will be able to identify cables or devices that support the new standard, all of which will need to be replaced to actually use it.

有一些 USB实施者论坛(USB-IF)于2019年宣布了USB 4的未来。 新标准使用相同的USB-C连接器，实际上是在Thunderbolt的基础上构建的 ，这将有助于解决大量的混乱并普遍提供快速的传输速度。 但是，就像以前版本的USB一样，获得设备认证仍将是可选的，并且对于消费者如何识别支持新标准的电缆或设备还没有明确的计划，所有这些都需要更换才能实际使用。 。

I’m thankful that USB-C is becoming universal, slowly pushing us toward a future where we have a single standardized connector for everything. But it’s more confusing than ever to perform the simple act of plugging things in. When it first arrived on the scene, USB-C was pitched as a utopia: One cable to rule them all, but now that we’re living in that future, figuring out which cable is the right one when they all look the same is an unresolved nightmare.

我很感谢USB-C的普及，并逐步将我们推向一个只有一个标准化连接器才能实现的未来。 但是，执行简单的插入操作比以往任何时候都更加令人困惑。当USB-C首次出现在现场时，它就被视为乌托邦：用一根电缆统治一切，但是现在我们生活在那个未来，找出哪条电缆是正确的，当他们看上去都一样，是一个悬而未决的噩梦。

翻译自: https://onezero.medium.com/usb-c-was-supposed-to-simplify-our-lives-instead-its-a-total-mess-626bb2ea3688