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seriously... what do people even use usb-a for besides charging things? compatibility was crap, transition to 3.0 was crap and even the highest end computers offered limited ports - opting to keep a few 2.0s given that support for 3.0 on the device side was even weaker, big, asymetric, fragile, ...

lets just let it die and move to cables that won't need a dongle and aren't thicker than almost everything in a laptop from this generation



Mouse, headset, keyboard, gamepad, bluetooth receiver, USB sticks, and yes a phone charger.

I have no intention of replacing any of these things until they break, that could be a long, long time.


This is exactly the same things people were saying when USB 1.0 arrived, yet somehow people managed to switch.


I'm pretty sure I didn't retire the last of my ps/2, serial, and parallel port equipment until about 2010. Gameport and AT probably went out around '05-'07—until then USB saw very little use and if I'd had to pick all-USB or no-USB, I'd have chosen the latter. My ~3-4yr old unremarkable desktop motherboard still has several legacy ports. I've made no special effort to resist USB, I just haven't retired equipment if it's still useful.

USB came out it 1996. Peripherals stick around a long time.


A bit misleading. Apple was the first major manufacturer to adopt USB in 1998. It took a good 5 years before PC's started adopting them. The move to USB-C is happening much faster.

http://www.tomsguide.com/us/why-your-next-phone-or-laptop-sh...

You'll soon need adapters to use those peripherals for laptops and Surface type devices.


The day when I don't have to squint to tell the difference between the various flavours of Micro/Mini USB cannot come too soon.


Serial and parallel devices died off pretty quickly though the ports lived on for various reasons. PS/2 keyboard and mice endured a good while longer.

I've only seen the joystick port appear on sound cards, which themselves are pretty much dead, and the AT connector was all but extinct by the mid 1990s.

New motherboards seem to fall into two camps: Legacy ports of all flavours, or ridiculous numbers of USB 3.0 ports. I saw one recently with 12 USB3.0 connectors on the back.


Doesn't mean those people were wrong at the time. I was still using a serial port until 2012, still using a PS/2 keyboard until 2014. So I was right not to buy a USB-only PC in 2010, even though I've now switched to one.


I picked up a 2-pack of USB-A/USB-C adaptors on Amazon for $10. I keep them in my bag, it hasn't been a problem. If you're plugging in more than two things at a time then you'd probably benefit from a hub anyway.


on desktop, i definitely feel you.


I still want to be able to transfer data to/from my phone (S7) and my camera. I still want to use my headset. These things are going to last for several years; as such I'm not buying a laptop without USB-A any time soon.


bluetooth? wifi? the future is wireless (hopefully, imo)


I tried a bluetooth headset but it had enough extra latency to throw me off (I play rhythm games sometimes). In theory my wifi's fast enough for copying data to/from my phone, but I don't think it offers an easy way to do that (and my camera doesn't have wifi at all).


> In theory my wifi's fast enough for copying data to/from my phone

I could HotSync my Treo over Bluetooth 10 years ago and it was an effortless two-way sync with reasonably good conflict resolution.

It amazes me that nothing quite gets that right these days.


Maybe something like that would be usable for text or sound, but transferring a video over bluetooth is paniful.


WiFi is clearly the correct solution in 2017. It's just sad how this has gotten harder for users as technology has otherwise improved.




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