I'll use Thunderbolt 3 as the example because it's the most stringent. At the 40G signalling it uses the connector loss is extremely high. The maximum passive cable you can have is << 1 m before the rx will start to encounter bit-errors. This forces manufactures to put re-drivers in the ends of the cable to boost the signal, which is obviously expensive.
Even just USB-C charging cables that need high-voltage have chips in each end to negotiate the correct protocol for both the devices and the cable.
Yes, except for HDMI alt-mode. The problem is they tend to be expensive/stiff cables because of the need to support Thunderbolt 3.
But HDMI alt-mode is a cluster anyway, because it takes over the conductors used for powering the device, so hopefully it will just go away and be replaced by the (imo) superior DisplayPort.
> What I don't understand is the "pro" in the name. Doesn't a "pro"fessional need to do things with their computer outside of a coffee shop; usable I/O, gigabit ethernet, slots for interfacing with their other professional equipment, etc. I can totally understand these features in a consumer edition laptop. But there is no longer a reason to call these "pro" laptops.
You can buy a single ~$80 hub that gives you all of those ports, AND you only need to plug 1 cable into your computer when you sit down at your desk. If you buy a new USB-C monitor, then all of those things are integrated in the display. Even the charger.
It has more IO throughput than pretty much any laptop out there with multiple Thunderbolt ports at 40Gbps. Even most desktops don't have _multiple_ 40G ports.
That's kinda the point, the new USB-C monitors have built-in USB hubs and charging. So you only need one cable to plug in all of your monitors and USB devices. It's going to take a little while for everyone to get there, but for now there are ~$80 hubs that will break out all of these ports.
> I still can't get over the fact that you can't plug your new iPhone 7 into your new Macbook Pro without a dongle.
You've never been able to though? There is a USB-C to Lightning cable.
I think he means, it doesn't even come in the box. Buy a MacBook Pro, buy an iPhone, and you can't even use one to charge the other without buying a separate cable or an adapter.
No, I just think the one cable solution with a USB-C monitor is really neat. I won't be getting one for personal use because they're too expensive right now.
I'll be picking up one of the $60-100 hubs/docks that have a single USB-C connector and HDMI/Ethernet/USB-A to connect all of my devices. When the monitors are cheaper in 4 years I'll buy one of those.
My point was that we're actually moving to a really good solution where you can plug in a single, non-proprietary cable and get all the throughput and peripheral connectors you could ever need. It's not even particularly expensive compared to a dock 5-10 years ago.
Eink uses a raster mode, but with (somewhat) tri-state pixels. You can send a 'no change' to any particular pixel. The disadvantage is you still need to scan the entire screen, so it isn't really useful for changing individual pixels, but partial updates are common.
The other difference from a traditional raster display is there is no minimum refresh rate.
Eink controller chips use an addressing model and handle the partial updates for you, so the main processor sees a bare framebuffer.
Note the link I submitted above, where it says that yes you have to send all rows with every refresh, but for every row you can tell it not to do anything. Presumably that means if you skip all but few rows, you'll get a faster update.
This does actually somewhat exist now. Most modern phones/tablets/ereaders have a low power core for monitoring and sleep modes. The problem is as soon as you want to 'do' anything you need the performance of the main core. Especially anything with graphics (like eink).
The Arduino is underpowered for anything more than a supervisory role, and even those applications are tending towards Cortex-M series.
