re "profit angle"... our Switch 1 stopped working last week, I assumed a charging port failure. No amount of trying to hard reset or leave on charge for days could nudge the little red battery off empty. I have to assume it's 5 years old at this point. So we sent it back to Nintendo to find out if it's salvageable at all. They told us today that it's the main board, and they'll replace it under warranty (what warranty?!) and we'll have it back Monday.

They don't seem to be one of those companies that's trying to squeeze maximal money out of their customers at every opportunity.

you seem new to the game, then. for years, and years, iPhone software (firmware) upgrades would kill 3rd party lightning cables. obviously not USB-C. Third party iPod cables were very hit and miss, too.

GP is talking about a proprietary Apple thing that just marked that the manufacturer paid the MFi royalty, not the thing that standard USB uses for legitimate reasons.

On the switch 1 first revision using a random charger could and would fry your SoC (happened to me). Yes they could have designed it to be usb-pd compliant but why wouldn’t you just use the charger it came with?

I've rarely used the official charger that comes with our switch. If I'm traveling with a laptop and a switch, I don't really want to bring more than one big PD charger so I'll just take my laptop charger since the cord is longer.

I do have a 3rd party switch dock I'll bring as well, it's barely any bigger than it's HDMI, USB A and USB C ports. It's so much less of a pain in the ass to bring. It also works with my steamdeck and with any laptop. Although I will say it's not as nice as just dropping the switch into a slot, everything is laid flat which means your TV area needs a bit more space to hold it.

Per el goog it seems like it needs USB-C/PD, so any "modern" USB-C-to-USB-C will probably work, this was likely a remembered experience of mine in the more USB-A to USB-C era with random USB-A wall-bricks that weren't matching the switch's expectations.

And agree how awesome it would be if it were "just a USB-C device", but if you put yourself in Nintendo's shoes there are some fairly rational desired outcomes that making it dock-centric rather than encouraging "loose on a tabletop with an unknown number of cords plugged in and going different directions".

I agree that it was defensible for Nintendo to have used a proprietary connector for the DS line (and GBA SP, for that matter), but USB was definitely ubiquitous by 2011 when the 3DS came out. Playstation 3 controllers used USB Mini as far back as 2006, and the Vita used USB Micro to charge in 2011, but Nintendo invented a new proprietary connector for the 3DS in the same year. Even using the same port as the DS would have been more sensible.

Exactly. It would be understandable if they took the connector and implemented something custom entirely. But they spent engineering effort on altering the official, already working spec, to subtly break it. This was completely intentional.

I wonder if it’s to be maliciously compliant with the EU law mandating USB charging for mobile devices?

> chose to make their implementation subtly non-compliant in several ways. And there is no discernible good reason to do so

Laziness is a good reason. If you both the dock and product why do anymore work than you need to especially for something that helps you in no way (supporting third party docks)

> and chose to make their implementation subtly non-compliant in several ways.

An alternate phrasing would be, they didn't bother to make their implementation compliant.

just like apple does!

It's for licensing, and having to request approval for the secret sauce.