you always have to manage a million different cables for each one, and they all suck. why can’t we just use AAA batteries instead of these shitty lithium ones? it’s so fucking frustrating. where can I find gadgets that work while plugged in, or at least don’t need to be recharged every two fucking days?
The “USB C” charger laws in the EU should help with this. As should the “right to repair” laws that are emerging.
Consider all the dinky appliances that end up in the garbage when their non-replaceable battery fails (like electric toothbrushes and razors). This is specially bad when the manufacturer chooses to use a lithium ion battery. Great way to start a fire in the garbage truck.
USB-C makes things kinda worse, in a way.
In the past you could slap together an adapter by chopping up some old cable and slapping it to a new power supply. And things would work, even if voltage or power ratings didn’t match exactly, or even at all (although, things would usually work much worse then).
I’ve jury rigged an adapter for my laptop, which uses a 65w, 20v power brick, to run off a 45w, 16v one, when mine died and I needed to access the files. It worked, as long as I wasn’t using doing anything too computationally intensive on the thing.
If the laptops used USB-C, that is very likely would not have worked at all. Chances are, the manufacturer of the smaller laptop would’ve bundled the cheapest power brick that covers the needs of the machine, so it would’ve most likely been 45w, 15v over power delivery. And mine would’ve been 65w, 20v over power delivery. And since everything in USB-C world has to talk to each other and agree beforehand, chances are, nothing would even try to work, even if it, realistically, can.