Written By: Kate Couch and Tony Sprando 

In 2019, Fox News reported the following: “Ajay Bhatt, who led the intel team that created the Universal Serial Bus [USB], told NPR the design of USB ports used to plug in devices such as keyboards, mice, printers and thumb drives is a bit annoying. Frustrated users have created several memes over the years mocking USB devices.” Even the inventor of the original USB thinks they’re hard to use — how far has USB come since?

It is quite humerus and humble of Bhatt to come out and say this to a world that uses his invention daily. He is referring to the design of the USB which can only be plugged in one way. However, since Bhatt invented the first USB, we have come up with faster and newer models.

The second USB, USB 2.0, was released in 2000. USB 2.0 delivers a maximum transfer speed of 480 megabits per second compared to the 12 Mbps (megabytes per second) of the original 1.1 USB. 10 years later, the USB 3.0 came out, delivering a transfer speed of 640 Mbps. With these improvements, the ability of the USB and USB ports has expanded.

Continuous improvement of extended bandwidth in the USB timeline is very significant; with every improvement made, the USB can support more technology. The USB 3.0 is the business-class videoconferencing standard. USB 3.0 is needed to transfer 4K video camera, webcam and PTZ camera content. Originally, USB could only support low-bandwidth devices like keyboards, mouses and printers. Now, USB can support formats such as 4K video, excessive amounts of storage and laptop and device charging.

In 2014, USB-C came out. It was a much faster improvement at 10Gbps. USB 3.0 has a capacity of 5 Gbps, making the USB-C twice the speed as its predecessor. The most remarkable thing about the USB-C is that it is reversible. This fixes the 20-year problem of the non-reversible USB that has been long made fun of. It really is ironic that it took us 20 years to fix such an obvious problem. Luckily those are all problems of the past! Both the USB 3.0 and the USB-C are used in today’s technology as they both support high bandwidth.

The interesting thing about technology is, even though the USB-C is the freshest thing out there right now, in less than five years we will probably have something new (and wouldn’t even imagine using the USB-C). The audiovisual world is constantly changing; keeping up with it isn’t always easy. The important thing to keep in mind is to constantly be checking in for new trends and tech on pages like this or other sites from around the web.

Thanks for reading!

*This article is Tony Sprando of AV Bends intellectual property. To use or reference this article please contact: Tony@avbend.com*

To know more about Tony and his professional profile see these:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/tonysprando/

https://www.ravepubs.com/author/tsprando/

www.tonythevguy.com

To know more about Kate and her professional profile see these:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/kate-couch-a7318220a/

https://k8couch.wixsite.com/katecouch