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ACAB but expressed in USB connector types (that funky shaped one on the right was a short lived USB connector type B). I only had like one peripheral, a scanner, that used it.
EDIT: Lots of people pointing me to printers and music gear with those ports! I dabble in music and my little korg nanoKEY2 uses mini USB. And I’ve not bought a new printer in over a decade (laser printer toner lasts forever). I think I unintentionally invoked Cunningham’s Law here
short lived
A printer I bought two years ago, a DAC a month ago. Its definitely not short lived
Yeah, AFAIK all printers still have these
Yeah I always call it the printer USB port. I wonder why it’s so popular there? Maybe it’s the USB connector that is hardest to break or pull off by accident?
My understanding it’s the other end of a one way USB cable. Normally the cable is attached like your mouse or keyboard, or commonly these days USB C, but if you are plugging in USB and it’s not USB C but the cable unplugs at either end, one will be USB A and the other USB B so you can’t put it in backwards like you could if they both has USB A.
Early android smart phones used USB B micro or mini, but printers have no need to keep the plug small.
Yeah, C had two major innovations: it was symmetrically functional, and it was symmetrically functional. Everybody knows about how A was kinda a pain because you’d try to plug it in upside down a lot, but A also was unidirectional. You never see male A to male A cables despite A being so common, meanwhile C to C is the default C cable, even things that would have used an integrated cord often just slap a port on instead
Maybe it’s the USB connector that is hardest to break or pull off by accident?
Yeah, pretty much. Printers and scanners are kinda the only common devices big enough not to need to use a more fragile mini-B or micro-B.
(There are certainly other more niche “big” devices that also use it: the MIDI connection on my digital piano, for instance.)
Wild, TIL.
So short lived you can still find it on brand new printers
In case anyone thinks you’re being figurative, LITERALLY brand new printers. The Brother laser I bought last week is USB-B, as I expected it would be : )
This replaced the HP laser I bought in 2004 which was, of course, also USB-B.
Why change? It does the job. The cable doesn’t need to pass audio or video, doesn’t need to pass fast charge power, and sure as hell doesn’t need 80Gbps data transfer speeds… the bottleneck will always be the print function itself. Usb-c would be overkill. And Usb-b is made to be secured to prevent accidental disconnection for devices that typically dont move like printers and scanners, unlike Usb-c which is made for repeated insertions and easy release for devices like smart phones. Only reason the connector might change in the future is if they either start adding stupid features to printers or if it simply becomes cheaper to support newer standards.
That and if you’re replacing a printer, you can just use the existing plugs as-is; no need to go fishing behind your PC to swap out the USB cable.
Also some screens still use that one to act as an USB hub for the PC. There’s also a variant that is a but taller, but I don’t know what that type is for.
Every printer for the past 20 years has used USB B
I don’t think I’ve ever owned a printer that had USB-B that didn’t also have Ethernet. The last time I hooked a printer directly to a computer instead of to the network, it was using a parallel port.
This guy doesn’t connect.
At least not for almost 30 years.
I think that was the last time I used a SCSI port printer with our family Mac. I know PCs hung on to parallel a little longer, but my first a win 98 machine had usb and a custom scsi port for my scanner and Zip drive (before I got an ATA internal Zip).
Anything non-portable that you plug in to a computer with a USB-A connection is supposed to have a USB-B on the other end if the cable is removable.
I have a lot of music gear with USB-B connectors on them
Same. Music gear (although my recent stuff has started going C), printers and scanners since USB became a standard, older networking hardware, older external hard drives (most of them before USB 3.0), and every piece of medical equipment I’ve ever dealt with. It was ubiquitous from the time USB started in the 90s until USB C got popular after 2014.
until USB C got popular after 2014
Nonono, USB-C isn’t over a decade old…
…
Well, the good news is that it wasn’t really popular in 2014. It probably didn’t become popular until about 7-8 years ago and that was thanks to smartphones.
The Nexus 6P had it in 2015. Samsung was one of the last to switch over, and they still did in 2017. I’d say closer to 9 years ago.
You’re right as far as devices go, I was just adding a year or two because most people don’t switch phones immediately at release.
The other side of that is I’m probably a little biased because I was using the weird usb-b 3.0 micro connector (the long ass one) until a couple of years ago on external drives until it got too painful to open up my sample libraries on spinning platters.
So maybe 9 years ago and my view is colored? Or between 7 and 9 years ago depending on how you’re measuring popularity?
Yeah my 2021 hearing aids were microusb and that’s late enough I was annoyed but not surprised. I’m due for a new pair this year and they better be C.
a short lived USB connector type B
Not short lived at all, it’s literally one of the three standard connectors alongside A and C. USB is an inherently directional protocol, so one side if the host device and the other is the peripheral device. The difference between Type A and B plugs helped enforce that directionality. Prior to the C connector becoming the new standard regardless of direction, all USB cables had both a Type-A and Type-B connector. (A to A cables violate the spec, and are an abomination).
The miniUSB and microUSB connectors are both Type-B connectors, just physically smaller to accommodate smaller peripheral devices. There’s also technically a mini-A and micro-A, but they’re very uncommon since host devices are usually large enough for a full size plug, and now USB 3.0+ Type-C connections don’t require a directional cable the same way.
USB 1.x type B definitely wasn’t short lived, I’ve picked up new devices with a B connector in recent years.
The B connector you pretty much never see is the USB 2.0 one. Pretty much all devices I’ve seen use the wide version of USB Micro-B or, you know, USB C.
Are you thinking of the USB 3.0 versions of Type B? 1.0 and 2.0 should be pretty much indistinguishable.
Right, that one. Sorry
ACAB: All Connectors Are Beautiful
Except that ugly “Lightning” one, flashing its pins all over outwards like a slag.
Wait until you learn about USB 3 with connector type B.
And of course USB 3 micro B, the mangled step child.
Such an ugly connector
It’s my favorite one.
usb microphone, usb audio interface, midi keyboard, printer they all use it
USB B is still standard with audio hardware for some reason.
Because it’s not short lived, it has a niche use. Basically its meant for receptor devices, whereas A is for host devices
As others have pointed out, B is still well in use today. But it seems nobody mentioned why: it’s because an A to A cable would be nonstandard and since there was no c yet, it’s the a to b cables. C to c is okay and there are funky A to A things which shouldn’t exist.
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Suuuubtle. Love it.
That took me a hot second, but I love that!
Honestly, it’s oddly satisfying how universal those symbols are. You don’t need words—everyone just gets it.
I think the people getting this are in a strong minority. Most people don’t know that the archetypical USB port is called USB-A, and most people don’t even interact with USB-B at all
Most people don’t know that the archetypical USB port is called USB-A, and most people don’t even interact with USB-B at all
Perhaps most people on the street. I would wager the average citizens understanding of, idk, Star Trek, Linux and also USB-ports is a smidgeon lower than the average Lemmings understanding of them, on average.
Is that a penguin with a Glock?
took me a while, but glad I kept looking
I think that “ACAB” is a bad thing, however I have to admit that this is clever
I think cops are a bad thing and I agree that this is clever.
Wow and its an acab reference?? Sold
The average person I know thinks of USB-B as “that squarish one.” The existence of the differently shaped USB-B 3.0 doesn’t help with this. Micro USB 3.0 also really throws people for a loop.
I think I’ve used maybe 3 devices in my whole life that use micro USB 3.0.
It was common for like five years on external hard drives.
Yeah that was one or two of the three devices
Didn’t the PS3 controller use it?
No those were mini-USB
I have used 4.
But 1 of them hadn’t implemented the USB 3.0 correctly in firmware, so it only worked well if I connected a micro USB 2.0, so I guess it’s 3 for me too.
Why doesn’t it at least have USB-A 3.0? One of those ports needs to be blue.
Is that the “thin blue line” I keep hearing about?
Loss?
I wonder if some rogue hardware designer could justify this port layout on some mass-produced commercial device, distributing the message to unsuspecting buyers.
Printers (the most common USB-B device nowadays) could use USB-C for power. They never need more than one USB-A, though (and in the rare use cases the user can supply a hub if supported in software; also that tends to be on the front).
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