[old ZX Spectrum loading sounds] [FuNkY uptempo advertising music] Are you fed up with dealing with all manner
of different connections? Serial, Parallel, bespoke chargers, bespoke
data connections?! Well fear no more, because USB is here! You'll never have to worry about having boxes
of cables ever again. Thank you to today's sponsor, Square Space. More on that later. Oh, apart from the fact that since it was
announced, USB connections seemed to change every damn year! [Easy lounge jazz] OK, so that's an exaggeration, but since mini
connectors were introduced with USB 2.0, we've been through numerous revisions, along with
all manner of different types. It seems like the dream of a single cable,
suitable for all, even 20 years later, still hasn't quite become the reality. But why? and how? and why? [Jazz music lingers in the USB filled air] Well, let's begin with the introduction of
USB. USB 1.0. Introduced in January 1996, with a maximum
data transfer rate of 12Mbit/s. The idea, pushed by a consortium of 7 companies,
was to make it easier to connect peripherals to your PC. I've covered this in a previous video, where
I delve into what we had before USB, but this is where it started, with representatives
from these companies creating the USB Implementers Forum; a nonprofit organisation setup to devise,
promote, support and enforce compliance with this new USB architecture. Initially, funding was provided by the companies
involved, but ongoing, the USB Implementers Forum would source funding from licencing. $5,000 for an annual USB-IF membership will
grant you a vendor ID, allowing you to seek a certificate of compliance, or $3,500 will
grant you a licence to use the USB logo, for a two year term Of course, the initial company support was
crucial, as it would take a while for USB to propagate into the world of PCs. Most people didn't get a sniff of it until
USB 1.1 emerged in 1998, which was handy, as version 1.0 had a few issues, relating
to timing and power supply. 1.1 is the point that Microsoft coined the
term "Legacy-free PC". Although at this stage, you'd expect USB A
ports to appear on new PCs, maybe a couple on the back, alongside your standard ports. Any peripherals shunning the slow serial or
parallel ports of old and making use of this spanking technology would either be hard wired
up or have USB-B connector on their end. Now, you might ask, what was the point in
having both a type A and type B connector? It's a good question. The type B connector is electrically identical. It has the same pins, but the size is different
intentionally to prevent users from connecting a host to another host, resulting in a short
circuit. At this stage USB ports didn't tend to have
graceful handling of power errors, so two connections trying to send .5v down the same
line, wasn't a good situation. And this is the whole premise behind the A
and B designation. A is for the host, B is for the slave device. AND not only that; for those of us who have
problems identifying the correct way to plug a USB in; just remember, if you can see the
USB logo on the top of the plug, you're plugging it in, the right way.... That's just solved 20 years worth of plugging
issues in one go. unless your USB sockets are mounted sideways, and then I'm afraid no one can help you However, lumping a MASSIVE USB B connection
on a digital camera, wasn't very graceful. It just looked a bit excessive. There was no provision for a smaller connector
on the slave end, as the USB specification assumed a tethered or hard wired connection. So some companies actually broke the rules
a little and implemented a standard A connector on their peripheral, or just implemented their
own bespoke connectors, such as this little offering. It would be the USB 2.0 revision, published
in May 2000, which first offered a mini B connector. In the USB-IF's own words, "The USB 2.0 specified
device side connector - the B connector - is too large for use with a new generation of
handheld and mobile devices, e.g. cell phones which would benefit from connectivity to a
PC. So, through improved hardware, USB 2.0 had
brought with it the potential for a whopping 480MBit/s transfer rate, with the cable consisting
of two power conductors and two signal conductors, same as 1.1. And this speed could be pushed through a now,
mini connector, completely opening up the world of peripherals in terms of both size
and operation. But, the world was changing rapidly. The situation of having a distinct host and
slave device was becoming a bottleneck. In the past, this arrangement had worked wonderfully. It meant that slave devices, such as a mouse,
DJ deck or even PDA device had to possess very little logic in this regard, as the host
would supply the power and handle all the communication over the bus. This leaves slave peripherals needing only
to poll when they require the host to do something. This is fine for most setups, but what if
you want your printer to be able to take on the role of the host and read data to and
from a USB stick, or you want your PDA to act as a host for your mobile phone. Well, then we need a different solution. This is where USB On-The-Go makes an entrance. First appearing in late 2001, in a supplement
to the USB 2 specification. The Mini AB receptacle was introduced, and
with it, the Mini A plug; now providing us with a mini host plug, and a mini slave plug. Now the Mini AB receptacle can accept either
the Mini A or Mini B connection, but due to the way these plugs are presented, and the
pins are aligned, the device can detect which one it is. Allowing the peripheral to swap roles. To enable the peripheral to identify whether
it's acting as a host or slave, the AB receptacle has an extra ID pin, in addition to the four
standard contacts. If a Mini A is plugged in, the additional
ID pin in the mini-A cable receptacle connects with the GND pin of the plug. If a Mini B is plugged in, it is left unconnected,
and a pull-up resistor is used to detect the absence of the connection. Thus, the peripheral can initially act as
master or slave, without causing power issues, or invalidating the A-B assignment of previous
cables. Pretty clever. Reportedly, there are also a few rare handheld
devices which had solely mini-A receptacles, allowing them to act as a standard host arrangement. But I'll be damned if I can find any. So, the world looks rosy. We've got mini connectors, with got standard
connectors, we've got on-the-go compatibility. Why would anything, ever change from this
point forward. ENTER MICRO-USB. -sponsor start- And also, this video's sponsor. SquareSpace. Now I've spoken about SquareSpace before,
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to match your needs, so go on, do it, do ittttt. -sponsor end- [Calming musical notes] Seriously, what the hell chaps? We had everything sorted, and now you pull
this one out of the bag???..... fine, alright then. Announced by the USB-IF on 4th January 2007,
here we have a plug which is almost exactly the same width as Mini-USB, but half the thickness,
and the reason? Well, the UBS 2.0 Specification Revision 1.01
of April 4th 2007 states; "USB has become a popular interface for exchanging
data between cell phone and portable devices. Many
of these devices have become so small it is impossible to use standard USB components
as defined in the USB 2.0 specification. In addition the durability requirements of
the Cell Phone and Portable Devices market exceed the specifications of the current
interconnects. Since Cell Phones and other small Portable
Devices are the largest market potential for USB, this specification is addressing this
very large market while meeting all the requirements for electrical
performance within the USB 2.0 specification." The scope goes on to clarify; "Cell phone and Portable Devices have become
so thin that the current Mini-USB does not fit well within the
constraints of future designs. Additional requirements for a more rugged
connector that will have durability past 10,000 cycles and still meet the USB
2.0 specification for mechanical and electrical performance was
also a consideration. The Mini-USB could not be modified and remain
backward compatible to the existing connector as defined in the USB OTG specification." So there're our reasons. Mobile phones were becoming too thin to support
Mini-USB, and the connector just wasn't rugged enough. The Mini connector was rated at 5,000 insertions,
whilst Micro is rated at at least 10,000. This includes the fact that Mini-USB put the
mechanical strain on the socket, rather than the cable. Here's the weak point; this sticky out bump,
which could pull and tug, and become distorted. This often led to disconnected sockets and
damage to peripherals, rather than a cheap, easy to replace cable. You can see on this Micro USB-B plug, that
it now has springy metal catches, which hold the plug firmly, without putting too much
strain on the receptacle. OK, well that all sounds reasonable. But dig a little deeper, and actually we find
that, as with many things in this world, the decision to move to Micro USB, wasn't solely
the decision of the USB-IF. It was perhaps pushed by one of the big guns
at the time, Nokia. [Mysterious tension music] In June of 2007 Apple's iPhone was set to
storm the mobile phone market. Up until that point, companies like Nokia,
Sony, Blackberry, even Panasonic were still heavyweights in the market. But clearly, having already been announced
in January of the same year, Apple's new entry had these companies pretty concerned. They knew they had to step their game up,
and no one knew this more than Nokia. Even at this point, Nokia were still relying
on their standard barrel plug chargers for a lot of their range. Phones like the 5700 XpressMusic had a Mini-USB,
but they were still pretty chunky slabs, unlike Apple's offering. Nokia needed to change tact. Nokia's premium phone, the 8600 Luna was one
of their first models to adopt MicroUSB. Paired with a stainless steel body, 2 Mega
Pixel camera and digital music player, it was probably the best they could muster to
fight off the iPhone. They had models like the N95, but that was
a chunky slab, announced in 2006 and really aimed at a different market. Take this excerpt from Stack Exchange; "I was involved in discussions and part of
the decision loop. Then a very big and leading mobile phone maker,
Nokia, asked for it. They even designed most part with a leading
connector maker (Molex). USB-IF eventually bit the bullet and accepted. It was Nokia who demanded it and the primary
reason was size, they were desperately trying to save space and had plans around OTG" It seemed that Nokia may have been at the
forefront of pushing to reduce the connector size, giving them more space both inside the
phone, and outside, at a time when freedom to innovate was crucial. And so, Micro-USB would become the new standard,
and with it a new On the Go Standard. The Micro-AB. With this we get 3 additional ID pin states,
offering the ability for devices to be connected to both a charger and another device simultaneously. Allowing Nokia and, other manufacturers to
expand on their OTG plans. Given the standards for Mini-USB were already
defined, it was impossible to implement these in the existing design and be backwards compatible. Therefore we have our new connectors, the
Micro B and of course, the Micro A, for following the same OTG premise as the mini connectors. And although we had to adapt to change, it
was easy enough. New phones, and devices - apart from Apple
of course - would move to micro ports, and we suddenly had a different set of wires to
chuck in our box. But this was going to be it going forward. In fact, in 2009, the EU's industry commissioner
, Guenther Verheugen, called for phone chargers to be standardised, to tbe Micro-USB format. And, in June 2009, ten manufacturers, of course,
including Nokia, but also Samsung and even Apple signed a Memorandum of Understanding,
committing to provide chargers compatible within two years. But it never fully happened with Apple simply
offering an adaptor to accomodate the standard. Of course, no one bought the adaptor and Apple
continues to use their own bespoke connector. [BASSSSS GEETARRRR] But, it seems, it would never have worked
out anyway, because, the USB 3.0 specification had already been published in November 2008,
and by 2010 the first complaint motherboards were announced, and with them transmission
rates of a whopping 5Gbit/s. Of course, USB 2.0 Micro connections couldn't
handle this bit rate, and so another 2 plugs entered the fray. Well, 3, if you count the blue Type A sockets. These are backwards compatible with 2 and
1.1, but actually introduce a new set of pins, specifically for USB 3 traffic. That caused a new set of problems with people
trying to use older USB cables for high speed purposes, which still persists to this day. For larger peripherals, we get a completely
different connector.... by tagging some extra pins on the top, those peripherals can now
accept SuperSpeed connections. We also get a SuperSpeed Micro-B, which adds
an additional 5 pins, beside the standard micro connector, again allowing for SuperSpeed
connections, whilst retaining backwards compatibility. I can still plug a Micro-B plug into this
connector just fine. But even at this point, you don't need to
USB-IF to point out this is a sloppy fix. It's not ideal to have these connector variants,
and it would be much nicer if we had a single connector type, that was On The Go compliant
out of the box and could handle Super Speed Connections. What we needed was USB-C. [big band] Developed concurrently to the USB 3.1 specification,
version 1.0 was published in August 2014. Here's what the IF said; "With the continued success of the USB interface,
there exists a need to adapt USB technology to serve newer computing platforms and devices
as they trend toward smaller, thinner and lighter form-factors. Many of these newer platforms and devices
are reaching a point where existing USB receptacles and plugs are inhibiting innovation, especially
given the relatively large size and internal volume constraints of the Standard-A and Standard-B
versions of USB connectors. Additionally as platform usage models have
evolved, usability and robustness requirements have advanced and the existing set of USB
connectors were not originally designed for some of the newer requirements" So, rather than just offering a new small
connector, the purpose of USB-C is to make this single connector the standard for ALL
devices, big or small. Host or slave. Thereby removing the existing layers of confusion. It can also be inserted upwards or downwards,
easing those woes at the same time. Arguably, it's what the original USB connector
should have been from the go. But as technology evolves and changes our
lives, so much its appearance, specification and standards. USB C carries all the learning from over 20
years of USB experience, and it's only by going through those processes that we can
sometimes end up, with the same simplicity as how we began. I guess at least we should be grateful that
USB-C is intended to be with us for the forsee-able future, through the subsequent revisions of
USB 3.1, with generation 2 capable of 10GBit/s, and the recent 3.2, which increases speeds
without requiring any connector changes, thanks to improved encoding and multi channel operation
through existing wires. We should even be good for USB 4. But hey, we've heard that one before haven't
we... and part of me thinks that actually, it may be a bit too bulky for that. Visions of Mini-USB spring to mind again. For now, we can just sit back and wait for
it to catch on everywhere. Because, these previous standards sure seem
to be lingering about. Now where's that parallel cable I was looking
for? I've got some printing to do. Thanks for watching and have a great evening. [Synth music to see you out]
haven't watched yet, but I'd rather ask why is it not gone yet?
they still sell laptops with USB type A, even 2.0 instead of 3.0, and few people I know would have something to connect to a type C port.