You won’t find these symbols on most devices though (certainly not on any macbook as the picture suggests).
By removing the symbols they were able to shave the case down 0.0003nm, making it the thinnest and lightest laptop ever.
If they etched the symbol they could have reduced the weight of the laptop by 0.003g making it even better
I didn’t take the image to be showing a macbook, it could just as easily be my computer or probably many others.
It could be, but combine the color looking very much like Apple’s space grey, the slimness of it, particularly how slim the lid is versus the body, and what looks like the MacBook’s classic black, rounded rubber stoppers on the bottom, I think it’s safe to say that’s meant to be an MacBook.
Also certain MacBook models tried to go to a single USB C port about a decade ago, and it was on the corner like that.
Why would you need them on a MacBook? They’re always* Thunderbolt.
Edit: Better explained by GamingChairModel below. I entirely forgot one series of MacBook, and also forgot when the older ones did have the Thunderbolt symbol on them.
No they aren’t. Only some are.
The only devices that don’t have at least Thunderbolt 3 on all ports do use the Thunderbolt logo on the ones that support it, except the short-lived 12-inch MacBook (non-Pro, non-Air). Basically, for data transfer:
- If it’s a 12-inch MacBook, the single USB-C port doesn’t support Thunderbolt, and only supports USB 3.1 Gen 1.
- In all other devices, if the ports are unmarked, they all support Thunderbolt 3 or higher
- If the ports are marked with Thunderbolt symbols, those ports support Thunderbolt but the unmarked ports on the same computer don’t.
For power delivery, every USB-C port in every Apple laptop supports at least first generation USB-PD.
For display, every USB-C port in every Apple laptop (and maybe even the desktops) supports DisplayPort alt mode.
It’s annoying but not actually that hard to remember in the wild.
True, my latest Dell laptop has 3 “usb-c shaped ports”, there is 0 symbol anywhere close to them or the underside cover, you’re on your own as to what it supports, you have to find the doc online somewhere I guess.
Tbf my work Dell Latitude 5440 has a USB A with a SS5, an A with a SS5 and charging indicator, a C with a thunderbolt indicator, and a C with a battery and a thunderbolt indicator.
So at least some of their laptops do in fact have the indicators similar-ish enough to what the infographic shows.
I discovered that my Thinkpad apparently supports charging from all of the (unlabeled) USB-C ports after I inadvertently started it charging from my cell phone’s (unlabeled) USB-C port.
I can do you one better: My GPD laptop has a charging indicator on the center type-C port indicating that this is where the power supply goes, but it can actually be charged from either port regardless of the icon. Both ports are USB 3.0 or 3.2 or whatever the current fast standard is this week, but only the center one supports video out via an external GPU enclosure. So if you want to use it docked with an eGPU, it’s actually required to not plug the power supply into the port that says you should plug the power supply into it.
So not only is the marking meaningless, it’s arguably worse than meaningless because in one of the headline hardware setups for the machine it is actually 100% incorrect to do what the marking is telling you to do. Wrap your head around that one…
I have never seen one with SS, but maybe they removed that part in Germany.
For those that don’t know
For the people don’t know… https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/88_(number)#In_neo-Nazism
I think that maybe having two similar lightning bolt symbols that mean different things wasn’t the best design decision that the USB guys could have made.
best design decision that the USB guys could have made
lol the whole history of usb is full of design fuckyous
I mean, they fixed that with USB-C (after introducing one small USB port, mini-USB, that wasn’t reversible, with the tensioners that wear out on the expensive (device) side and and then introducing micro-USB which fixed the tensioners but still wasn’t reversible).
I’d personally kind of like to have magnetic breakaway connectors or similar so that I can’t damage devices if they fall, especially given that micro-USB and USB-C aren’t the most-physically-robust of connectors. Adapters with proprietary ways to do this exist:
https://www.amazon.com/MoKo-Magnetic-Adapter-Straight-Thunderbolt/dp/B0CGLM6PYN
But they aren’t part of the USB spec. If they ever switch to something like that, we’re gonna have another phase of incompatibility.
The ‘Thunderbolt’ symbol is Intel’s proprietary technology. Apple and Intel made it. First apple registered Thunderbolt as a trademark but later they transferred it to Intel. The lightning bolt icon which supports fast charging phones or other devices when connected to the laptop is different and developed by the USB guys.
Things are muddied a bit though because USB 4 has built in support for thunderbolt
Everything defined in the Thunderbolt 3 spec was incorporated into the USB 4 spec, so Thunderbolt 3 and USB 4 should be basically identical. In reality the two standards are enforced by different certification bodies, so some hardware manufacturers can’t really market their compliance with one or the other standard until they get that certification. Framework’s laptops dealt with that for a while, where they represented that their ports supported certain specs that were basically identical to the USB 4 spec or even the Thunderbolt 4 spec, but couldn’t say so until after units had already been shipping.
One should note that though Thunderbolt over USB-C offers the same speed and connectivity as a native thunderbolt cable, the native cable can be 40m long whereas the USB-C implementation is max 2m
The USB-C standard and particularly the USB PD (power delivery) is so complex it almost feels comical.
The PD standard document (freely available on usb.org) is over 800 pages long and features a lengthy part about the role of the cable alone which is mostly hidden from the user. Here’s a short video about this issue: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6bZ0y9G-4Pc
It gets even better, each function of the port also needs proper support from the cable. Often cables do not support the full spec of usb to cut costs.
While the symbols in the post are often put on computers, for usb cables this is seldom done (only a few brands do).
Source: had to find a cable that supports both DP and PD to connect a portable external monitor after I lost the original cable. (1/9 cables worked)
Yes, this is incredibly annoying and it’s also the reason why some USB cables cost more than others, even they may look the same superficially.
One of those cables that don’t work is rated for like 120W, with gigabit transfer speed… But it refuses to transmit display… Like bruh
That sounds like a dedicated charging cable. So yeah, they will (if at all) only transfer data slowly and not support any extras features like displayport.
For that portable monitor, you should just need a cable with USB-C plugs on both ends which supports USB 3.0+ (could be branded as SuperSpeed, 5Gbps, etc). Nothing more complicated than that.
The baseline for a cable with USB-C on both ends should be PD up to 60W (3A) and data transfers at USB 2.0 (480Mbps) speeds.
Most cables stick with that baseline because it’s enough to charge phones and most people won’t use USB-C cables for anything else. Omitting the extra capabilities lets cables be not only cheaper but also longer and thinner.
DisplayPort support uses the same extra data pins that are needed for USB 3.0 data transfers, so in terms of cable support they should be equivalent. There also exist higher-power cables rated for 100W or 240W but there’s no way a portable monitor would need that.
Yeah, it’s gotten so bad I eventually ordered a USB cable checker to figure out what any given USB cable is capable of (and to see if the cable has gone flaky, which seems to happen a lot). I haven’t received it yet so I don’t know if I can recommend this item, but … gosh darn you sure need something like this.
Sometimes people want to charge their phone in an outlet 10 feet from their airport seat.
Sometimes people want to transmit 8k video.
It’s not physically possible to do both tasks with the same cable.
But because USB is a flexible standard, we don’t have two incompatible specs to do the same thing. So when you get out of the airport and to your meeting, you can actually plug your phone into the meeting room projector for your business presentation. That’s a win.
