Alas, with the phone plugs, the locking tabs break off, and the cable eventually falls out on it’s own.
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On some other audio forum, there’s probably a couple of posters talking about how RCA is the demon spawn and should be replaced with XLR or BNC.
Personally, I think the stereo miniplug is prone to falling out.
Lately, I’ve discovered that the notch that locks the headphone cord in place on my Sennheiser HD558 has been destroyed-- so the cord makes a rather loose connection. Quite annoying. I should experiment with gaffer tape.
When I buy new hardware, I’m too busy chasing the failure modes that have bitten me in the past, and can’t imagine how other flaws might bite me in the future.
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When Bhatt is buried, his coffin will be lowered into the grave right-side-up, then up-side-down, then right-side-up again when it finally fits.
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i’m looking at you ethernet! good cables ruined for the smallest but of plastic in the world.
i think it’s the use case maybe. audio jacks get abused. twisting and pulling. slammed from side to side. anything on a phone, walkman, or ipody thing.
i suspect any plug might suffer the same. though the long tall nature of the jack does seem to make things worse. maybe something like mac’s magplug might’ve been way better. ugh. patents.
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They weren’t, but you could generally orient them by touch and get them inserted properly, and due to their shapes as long as you don’t force them you know right away you’re upside down. Even circular connectors like DIN and mini-DIN weren’t so bad because they had indicators you could feel to help you orient it blind. (Some non-standard DIN-like unkeyed connectors are plain garbage, though.) Since USB-A is often slightly recessed, it’s can be very hard to tell “is it upside down or do I just need to press harder”.
But in any event, nobody’s denying how much of a marvel USB ended up being or how much it improved on old peripheral designs. After all, the title of the article is “the plugs are annoying”. Not “the plugs are the worst pieces of shit ever” or anything.
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My lightning cables break all the time
opted for a rectangular design and a 50-50 chance to plug it in correctly, versus a round connector with less room for error…
yet another example of computer people locked into binary thought: “there are only two shapes possible.”
well, guy, allow me to blow your mind:
trapezoid.
isosceles triangle.
nice and symmetrical-looking, but will only fit a receptical one way.
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The way to do it is create an innovation contest at NineSigma or elsewhere online, with a decent (5K) cash prize plus a trip for two to the European office. I’ve won 3 of them including one for a filter end connector that had similar concerns. Or you could hunt me down off my current trip. Saves time.
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If only they would put a “this side up” mark on it!
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Not complaining, but I yoosta write mouse and tablet drivers and fiddled with IRQs and ports on a frequent basis, an excellent preparation for general embedded systems work.
I don’t have a problem with USB plugs so much as I do with the protocol which mandates spewing verbose headers atop nearly empty packets and running USB 1-2 drivers in polled mode. A USB drive is a good way to eat 20% of your MIPS.
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The cable, or the plug? If you’re breaking the plug, you’re doing it wrong.
The cable, yeah.
Then pull it back up, and lower it back down the first way… and then it fits.
<one of my favorite comics/ideas in the past 15 years>
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This could be solved by a bevel or painting an arrow, no? Why is that solution so uncommon?
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They do. Unfortunately it’s used interchangeably with an identical “this side down” symbol
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A what now?
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I think he means an isosceles trapezium. Like how the RS-232, Centronics SCSI-1 and VGA ports were shaped.
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Phew. I was worried they might mean something decidedly more non-Euclidean.
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Oh, like the plasma conduit connectors on a Culture vessel? Those are seven-dimensional and only certain drones know how to connect them. Those of us with only normal three dimensional vision can only see their shadows in realspace.
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What, you don’t have these shapes in your dimension?
(reminder: Sheiff knows too much. . . )
Yeah, it was a ludicrous description, I deserved to be called out for that. Fnordius explained what I had in mind it far better than I had.
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