{"id":18731,"date":"2017-08-24T14:49:27","date_gmt":"2017-08-24T18:49:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/?p=18731"},"modified":"2017-08-29T13:24:01","modified_gmt":"2017-08-29T17:24:01","slug":"how-some-thunderbolt-3-cables-underperform-with-usb-only-drives","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/2017\/08\/24\/how-some-thunderbolt-3-cables-underperform-with-usb-only-drives\/","title":{"rendered":"How Some Thunderbolt 3 Cables Underperform With USB-only Drives"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/tidbits.com\/article\/17411\">Glenn Fleishman<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote cite=\"http:\/\/tidbits.com\/article\/17411\">\n<p>You can purchase what are effectively four kinds of cables that have USB-C connectors on both ends[&#8230;]<\/p>\n<p>[&#8230;]<\/p>\n<p>The trouble that AppleInsider discovered arises only in a particular set of circumstances:<\/p> \n<ul> \n<li><p>You have a hard drive with a USB-C port that supports only USB 3.1.<\/p><\/li> \n<li><p>You&rsquo;re using a Thunderbolt 3 cable to connect that drive to a Thunderbolt 3-capable computer.<\/p><\/li> \n<li><p>The Thunderbolt 3 cable is active, rather than passive.<\/p><\/li> \n<\/ul> \n<p>Instead of carrying up to 5 Gbps of USB 3.1 Gen 1 data, these active Thunderbolt cables throttle down to USB 2.0 speeds, offering about one-tenth as much throughput.<\/p> \n<\/blockquote>\n\n<p>Update (2017-08-29): <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/dhh\/status\/901933312989650944\">David Heinemeier Hansson<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote cite=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/dhh\/status\/901933312989650944\"><p>Why have a USB-C standard if you need x-ray vision to determine what a given cable is capable of?<\/p><p>[&#8230;]<\/p><p>Apple&rsquo;s charger cable has no identifying markers. No clue it only carries power. Some times the computer industry is too smart for itself.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<blockquote cite=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/dhh\/status\/901937628051902466\"><p>USB-C is giving Bluetooth a good run for its money as The Most Frustrating Standard out there.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/DonWauchop\/status\/901936566381240320\">Don Wauchop<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote cite=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/DonWauchop\/status\/901936566381240320\"><p>This week I watched a genius fruitlessly try 5 USB-C cables to figure out which was Thunderbolt 3.<\/p>\n<p>Jony Ive has taken minimalism too far.<\/p><\/blockquote>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Glenn Fleishman: You can purchase what are effectively four kinds of cables that have USB-C connectors on both ends[&#8230;] [&#8230;] The trouble that AppleInsider discovered arises only in a particular set of circumstances: You have a hard drive with a USB-C port that supports only USB 3.1. You&rsquo;re using a Thunderbolt 3 cable to connect [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"apple_news_api_created_at":"","apple_news_api_id":"","apple_news_api_modified_at":"","apple_news_api_revision":"","apple_news_api_share_url":"","apple_news_coverimage":0,"apple_news_coverimage_caption":"","apple_news_is_hidden":false,"apple_news_is_paid":false,"apple_news_is_preview":false,"apple_news_is_sponsored":false,"apple_news_maturity_rating":"","apple_news_metadata":"\"\"","apple_news_pullquote":"","apple_news_pullquote_position":"","apple_news_slug":"","apple_news_sections":"\"\"","apple_news_suppress_video_url":false,"apple_news_use_image_component":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[90,30,1381,201,175,1154],"class_list":["post-18731","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-technology","tag-cable","tag-mac","tag-macos-10-12","tag-thunderbolt","tag-usb","tag-usb-c"],"apple_news_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18731","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18731"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18731\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18757,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18731\/revisions\/18757"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18731"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18731"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18731"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}