Let’s have the Universal Serial Bus (USB) for everything. I mean it. Will the world really stop spinning if this becomes reality? But to do this, we have to stop calling every weird connector out there “USB”, and be strict on what we mean by USB.

We should also have at most two standard connectors: one for large devices, and one for small devices. Right now, what passes for “USB” doesn’t seem to be all that universally accepted.

Some USB connectors are provided by the manufacturer of the gizmo and none other. Get with the frigging program, people! The only reason USB connectors are so inflexibly proprietary is because manufacturers want to lock you in to their gadget and not someone else’s. The worst one is my cell phone, which has a connector which looks like nothing before in the history of the universe at one end, and a USB on the other.

The cell phone, a Samsung, is a study in real lock in. They will probably make a connector like mine for that one phone for this year, then never again. The headphone/mic jack, the data cable jack, and the charger  all plug into the same port, so you can only do one thing at a time.

At the very least, if they can make it a USB on one end, then it ought to be at least a mini-USB on the other.