Hector Martin

This is how standards work. The standard defines the maximum capabilities, which not all devices need to implement. The standard *may* define some minimum capabilities for *certain* devices, like USB 2.0 requires hubs and hosts to support 480mbps (but not devices).

I feel like the complaint is primarily about hosts, and the perception that a company could take a computer equipped with a 3.1 chipset and with zero modifications slap a 3.2 sticker on it, even though it could never achieve more than the 3.1 it was allotted.

Is anyone actually doing that? I've looked at the 3.2 spec and I can't find a hard requirement for hosts, though it *does* say that *hubs* have to support all speeds. USB 2.0 *did* require hosts to support 480mbps. This could be an oversight in the spec.

I honestly have no idea! But apparently, at the least, some people think they are, or could. At least, that was the sense that I got from the Ars article.

The author of the article just had a back-and-forth with me on twitter but he didn't produce any examples of *hosts*, just of devices, so I dunno...

Fair enough; I don’t even know. Juuuuust seems like an unnecessarily confusing mess, probably moreso than other versioned specs. But I don’t really know the realities of the marketplace. So *shrug*.

Honestly I think part of the problem is just that USB is the most widespread, bottom-of-the-barrel, cheapest-crap-you-can-imagine devices standard. So of course it also gets the most bullshit marketing.

Oh yeah, that’s a major contributor. But re-branding old specs as <NewSpec Gen N-1> is… weird and silly, and adds to the confusion. Did they *update* the 3.1 spec when they renamed it?