Over the past year or so, one of the biggest tech stories has been about one of the smallest things: a USB plug. Specifically, the new USB Type-C plug and port, which promises to become the single thing that we can use to connect all our devices, from monitors to phones to computers to whatever we dream up next.
USB-C has the support of the biggest companies in the tech industry. Apple and Google released the first laptops to use it, and now it’s showing up on computers, tablets, and phones all over the place. USB-C is reversible and can deliver huge amounts of both power and data very quickly. Importantly, it’s also backwards-compatible so that adapters and cables can get us through the awkward period between now and when it actually becomes the universal standard.
It’s that last bit that has USB-C in trouble. Right now, if you aren’t very careful, a USB-C cable can destroy your laptop. If you just go to Amazon and buy any pack of USB-C cables you find, you could end up with a wire that can destroy your machine in a flash.
That’s what happened to Google engineer Benson Leung, who, in the course of testing a USB-C cable, destroyed his Chromebook Pixel. It happened instantly. It also happened to me — I used a cheap cable I found on Amazon to charge my Nexus 6P and it drew too much power from my MacBook Air’s USB ports. Apple did a remarkable job engineering the MacBook’s ports — they shut down temporarily to protect themselves — but when they came back online, they only worked intermittently.
The problem is that when you plug a USB device in, it starts drawing power. If it tries to pull too much power, the device that supplies it can burn out. It’s not the Nexus’ fault that my MacBook got fried — it was just doing what it was supposed to do: ask for as much power as it can get. It’s not the MacBook’s fault either — its ports weren’t designed to handle delivering that much juice nor to know that they shouldn’t even try. It is the fault of the cable, which is supposed to protect both sides from screwing up the energy equation with resistors and proper wiring. This kind of failure is possible with any cable, but older kinds of USB devices didn’t draw this much power.
The solution should be simple, then: just don’t buy cut-rate USB-C cables. But "just buy the more expensive one" is a really crappy solution. Right now, if you want to buy a safe cable, you have to know Leung is the only person vetting them in a broad way on Amazon. Here’s the process you have to go through:
- Know that this is an issue in the first place.
- Know that this one helpful Google engineer is the only person testing and reviewing USB-C cables.
- Go hunting for Leung’s reviews on Amazon (or, alternately, discover this spreadsheet or this website created by redditors to aggregate his reviews).
- Buy a cable.
- Pray.
This process is insane, and it shouldn’t be this way. In fact, I believe this failure should have been obvious to everybody involved in the creation of USB-C. Apple and Google helped design the spec, but a little-known industry group called the USB Implementers Forum is in charge of maintaining and propagating it. It does have a certification process for approving cables. When I asked about this issue, the USB-IF noted that it has certified 61 cables so far and that it "continually meets with the major retailers in North America, including Staples, Best Buy, and MicroCenter to educate about the importance of compliance and certification."
It also pointed me to its logos that certify safety, which look hilariously outdated:
But the real problem isn’t the logos, it’s that you can’t find them anywhere on the biggest electronics retailer on the internet: Amazon. If you want to buy a cable on Amazon — where you already shop — you will need to go through that five-step process above.
When hoverboards started exploding, the industry reacted. Amazon pulled sales, manufacturers stepped up their standards, and ultimately we got to a place where UL started certifying boards as safe. We’re not at the danger-to-human-life-and-limb stage with this USB-C problem, but nevertheless, we need a similar solution now.
Apple solved this problem with its proprietary Lightning cable. It has a "Made for iPhone" licensing program, and anything that doesn’t have that label is potentially dangerous. With USB-C, Amazon needs to pull dangerous cables from its store and every single retailer needs to demand that USB-C cables are certified. And the USB-IF needs its partners like Apple and Google to help push cable makers to stop making dangerous products. And, you know, a better logo wouldn’t hurt, either.
Even if these problems get fixed, USB-C still faces the usual aggravations that come with any new kind of connector. I’ve watched basically every kind of computer cable imaginable in the past 30 years take an achingly long time to propagate through the industry, and it’s always a hassle.
Because I understand how slow these things go, I can accept that I still can’t connect my Apple-made laptop with my Apple-made display because finding adapters that work is nigh-impossible. I can also accept Intel’s frustrating pace of integrating its own Thunderbolt (not to be confused with Apple’s Lightning) standard into USB-C. USB-C is going to take awhile before it’s the standard.
But it will never get there if the only way to know whether a cable will literally blow up your expensive laptop is a single, heroic engineer leaving Amazon reviews and Google+ posts. Amazon needs to stop selling bad cables. Google, Apple, and everybody who makes devices that use the port need to get together and figure out how to let consumers know which cables are actually safe to use. Until that happens, consumers can’t trust this new standard — and that’s a great way to kill it before it takes off.
Comments
So they essentially failed after the surge.
Not really a ‘remarkable job’, and most likely part of Intel’s USB chipset/engineering, not apple’s.
By TriDeka on 02.04.16 11:52am
you know.. every thing that has an apple for the verge is perfect
By AFRK on 02.04.16 11:56am
Actually it’s a widely known "fact" that everything Apple does is remarkable. The fact that they even let other companies survive and people live is a testament to how truly remarkable they are.
By anotherverge on 02.04.16 12:21pm
amen to that
By marattmohith on 02.04.16 1:49pm
They have to let people live, who would they sell products too otherwise? D=
By HawkeyePharmD on 02.04.16 7:28pm
The rest of the laptop didn’t fail, which is actually good given what was happening to the ports.
By Dieter Bohn on 02.04.16 12:00pm
IDK, still kind of reads like shoehorned Cupertino praise to me.
By BigRobFed on 02.04.16 12:09pm
If he had wrote the same exact thing about, say, an XPS 13, would it be shoehorned Dell praise?
By techee44 on 02.04.16 12:13pm
Maybe, but he didn’t. It seems n = 1 here. Dieter tried it with his Macbook Air and it survived, but he didn’t try with an XPS 13 or any other machine. He just assumed that this probably works because Apple did an outstanding job. Probably there are others that do the same outstanding job.
This line doesn’t add much to the article, but it certainly feeds the discussions, so maybe it does add something!
By rmnl on 02.04.16 2:44pm
Except for the part in the article which mentions that the Chromebook Pixel died because of faulty Type-C wire. That didn’t happen on the Apple computer, but did on the Google one. Hence, better engineering.
By Dire on 02.04.16 4:09pm
The C
By canisminor on 02.04.16 5:06pm
The ChromeBook tied because the cable was used to supply power to the ChromeBook and had the wires mixed up. I am sure that same cable would have fried the 2015 MacBook if it had been used to supply power too. This isn’t a problem of engineering on either the ChromeBook or MacBook. Take your US 110V television and plug it into the 220V washer/dryer socket in your house, and you will fry your television. That’s what happened to the ChromeBook
Dieter is highlighting a completely different topic: the cable allowed the Nexus to draw more power from the Air than designed. The ports should have failed safe. Seems they just failed. More a testament of BAD engineering on the MacBook Air.
By canisminor on 02.04.16 5:09pm
I’ve never seen such an ignorant post in my life. You really don’t know what you’re talking about, do you? Nothing you said addressed the issue here, which is the fact that Apple’s superior engineering saved this computer from dying, while the inferior engineering of its competitors makes computers fry to death, makes them unusable. That’s why Apple laptops are the highest rated laptops by the tech media, and why they have the highest user satisfaction rating out of any laptop out there in the world. Not to mention the superior design and quality of parts. Maybe if windows OEMs could build computers that don’t fry all the time, we wouldn’t need to prove a point that Apple laptops are better in throwaway comments in the middle of articles
By Dire on 02.04.16 5:37pm
Unfortunately you probably don’t know how Benson Leung’s Pixcel C died.
It wasn’t a normal ‘bad’ cable where a wrong resister was used. It was a completely mis wired cable where the Voltage was wired to the Ground. This cable would fry anything that was connected to it.
Dieter’s cable was just a non USB C compliant cable that used the wrong resistor so the Nexus 6P was pulling too much power out of the Macbook.
By nXtIak on 02.04.16 9:43pm
Don’t reply with facts but Apple love fantasies.
By friedchickenfiend on 02.05.16 12:05pm
Supplying power to and drawing power from are two different things. In this case the Nexus 6P is the one that was in danger, The Macbook’s USB failsafe probably protected the phone, but unfortunately not itself.
Unless someone is injured and there is a criminal negligence lawsuit, there is no point in micro analyzing this and blaming or praising one manufacturer or the other.
By StarkFuture on 02.05.16 3:26am
Also, just wondering why is it Amazon’s responsibility to certify the cables. Isn’t that the job of the standards organization or the manufacturers to form a certifying authority?.
By StarkFuture on 02.05.16 3:29am
Amazon is a retailer and is partially responsible for the products they sell. If the products they sell destroy customers other products when used as intended, they are responsible for selling the faulty products. At minimum they should pull them all and make sure any offered are certified. Ideal would be to facilitate compensation for the damaged product with the manufacturer paying the cost of damage caused.
By NothingUnknown on 02.05.16 8:27am
Actually these days it likely would not. The power supply in most electronics are rated at 100-240V these days because we in Europe run on 240V.
It’s why you can bring your laptop to the UK, buy a £5 adaptor (which is just changing the pins) and not have it blow up.
By WayAway on 02.05.16 7:48am
Well on the Pixel the only damaged part was the USB ports and the Embedded Controller of it, the Pixel booted up but in recovery mode because of the damaged chip but nothing else suffered.
https://www.amazon.com/review/R2XDBFUD9CTN2R/ref=cm_cr_rdp_perm
By armrek on 02.04.16 6:14pm
Theres a substantial difference in engineering when supplying power and when receiving power.
Protection against overdrawing on the USB ports is standard; most chipsets even supply notifications (in software) when these surges happen. These issues aren’t unusual.
Getting supplied too much power however is a very different beast, especially when its not even happening on the correct lanes, as was the case with the Pixel. The difference in effect between the two is also huge.
By Exhale on 02.04.16 6:26pm
The Chromebook Pixel was charged with a faulty cable. The Macbook Air was used to charge. Two different scenarios and no proof that Apple’s engineering is superior.
We could compare charging the new 12inch Macbook and the Chrome Pixel to see if that shows a difference and then we can compare.
By rmnl on 02.05.16 8:41am
It’s pretty hilarious how bipolar some people are. Just a few years ago, Apple could do not wrong in the mind of these people. Now, they view anything Apple in a bad light. In the other spectrum, Tesla Motors can do not wrong and anything remotely negative written about them is met with disdain or backlash. That crowd feel the need to worship some entity and at the same time hate another. No middle ground.
By Intosh on 04.06.16 12:08am
This could have fried the full logic/motherboard – so the engineering was good.
By Dube on 02.04.16 12:13pm
Ok. Now bring the Laptop to Apple and let them change the whole motherboard. Besides: This wasnt Apple, it was Intel who saved the board. I burned my house, but I did a remarkable job on not burning my neighbors house → still bad.
By eluchsinger on 02.04.16 12:17pm