Thanks to USB-c, kids today don’t know the most important electronics rule of the last century: “Only use the charger that came with the device.” The smell of burning electronics remains indelibly linked to the sadness of frying something precious because I plugged it into the wrong wall wart.

isnt the whole point of usbc to make an actually universal cord format though?? is this not an explicitly good thing to do? like, instead of 20,000 seperate cord types and shit its just 1 universal connector type you can use with like 90% of shit also usb 3.1, as nice as it is, is just slower

They now get the creeping dread of using any third party charging cable that may or may not overheat the device or do bad bad things to the battery.

I can remember when I could only use a keyboard using the Apple Desktop Bus connector

Guitar pedals versus keyboards. They both use a 9V barrel connector, identical sizes. Pedals are pin negative, keyboards are pin positive... usually. Except for a few. And you need a magnifying glass to read which is which on the wall warts. Many friends have let the magic smoke out of their pedals.

Music gig related, plugged in BBE sonic maximiser which adds high end sparkle as it goes into power amp, not before but stupidly after power amp and fried the chips with a lot of Watts. Nice repair bill. Moral check right charger or connection and when in the chain

Not just kids- my 89 year old mother in law who’s pretty much destroyed her devices

There’s still an issue with people using universal outlets that put out too many watts for the device they’re charging, and totally frying it. Usually those ones that are in fancy new chairs and headboards and everything else

That and the futility of always plugging in a USB cord wrong on the first attempt.

Now we get a new era of “does this confirm to PD specs?” Roulette and weird devices that only use 5v/etc. A poorly designed charger can and will smoke another USB device still. Especially something like a USB laptop charger that doesn’t support lower voltages. Good idea to always check!

Seems like a good thing for everything to be “smart” and compatible with variable voltage