Daily(ish)

I need to vent about how the USB‑C ports on my pricey Mac Studio aren’t all the same, even though they look identical, and how I don’t want to have to remember which port supports what speed, power, or device type. I was terrified to record this episode because I figured my computer would be listening and start shutting down on me again. But I got through it. Somehow. Barely.

Links Mentioned in This Episode:
Topics:
00:00 Intro
00:21 USB-C Port Confusion
00:49 Random Reboots and Failing Drive
01:20 Why Ports Should Just Work
02:43 Dave Rupert’s Port Nightmare
03:51 Better Errors and AI Help
04:56 SSD Prices and Wrap-Up
05:25 Outro and Subscribe

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Creators and Guests

Host
Chris
I edit podcasts so you don't have to. I live in Saskatchewan so you don't have to?

What is Daily(ish)?

Challenging myself to record a podcast episode a day for my 50th year on this planet.

Chris: Hello and welcome to Dailyish for
Thursday, sorry, September 24th, 2026.

Brain fart.

I'm recording an episode every day
for this, my 50th year on the planet.

This is another petty grievances episode.

Uh, I still haven't run
out of petty grievances.

I had this one labeled in my
suggestion list or topic idea list

for a while as just a frustration
of all USB-C ports on my fancy…

I don't remember what it was.

Three-- it was $3,000.

It's probably now $4,000 is what you
pay for it, uh, Mac Studio computer.

Um, that all the USB-C
ports are not the same.

I, like, I don't need Apple
apologists or technology people.

I don't need advice.

I don't need support here or tech support.

I'm just…

It's a petty grievance.

I'm, I'm complaining

but then yesterday, my computer, at
the end of the day, after a great

day of working, getting stuff done,
really efficient, I had, like, a bit

of downtime towards the end of the day
and thought, "Sweet, I'm gonna do some

fun stuff, maybe play, stream little
video games or whatever to my Twitch

channel, play some Fortnite, something."

And as I start, tried doing
that, everything shut down.

My computer started rebooting randomly.

Didn't know why.

And in the end, the long story short
version is a hard drive was failing

that was plugged into a USB-C port,
and maybe it's in the wrong port.

I don't know.

Because even though USB is universal
serial bus, and so the implication should

be that they're all the same, Apple and
other technology companies have decided

that even though we have the same port
connection, some of them are lightning,

some of them are thunder, some of them
are USB 2, some of them are USB 3, some

of them have power, some of them don't
I'm not saying that every single USB-C

port in the world should be the same.

I understand that the standard can evolve.

I like that.

I understand that we can improve.

There's new technology, and so
we can put more power through a

USB-C port that we couldn't before.

Awesome.

What I want is when I buy a brand-new
Mac Studio computer, it has USB-C ports

on it that are all the same as each
other, the best ones you can get for

that time in that moment, so that any
USB-C port I plug into on my $3,000 Mac

computer is the same and it works the
same, it has the same speed, it has the

same power, it has everything the same.

I realize that puts extra pressure
on designing the enclosure for your

MacBook Pro or your Mac Studio or your
iMac or whatever to have all those

USB-C ports, but I don't wanna have to
know which port I can plug in a camera

or a hard drive or digital capture
device of some sort into my computer.

I just wanna know they all
work and they're all great

I also have to shout out friend and
client Dave Rupert, uh, who wrote the

story that I read a couple episodes
back on their podcast, Shoptalk Show.

He was commiserating about his
Windows computer that once he

unplugged something from a weirdly
labeled U-USB port, USB-C, I think

it was, USB port anyways on the back.

It wasn't…

It was a port that was designed
just for plugging in a BIOS

update for a Windows machine.

Once he unplugged a keyboard or
whatever it was that was plugged into

that, then his computer worked fine.

He'd been troubleshooting it for off
and on for six months, hadn't been

playing games because of this stupid
port that was, had a little label on

it that you couldn't see necessarily.

And I just feel like in 2026, we
should be able to design things

such that if that happens, the
whole computer doesn't lock up.

It tells you and spits out an error that
says, " Hey, that port you plugged this

into isn't designed for that, and so
then please use a different port Or in

my case, my Mac Studio starts rebooting,
shutting down because something is

plugged in to a USB port, a hard drive
that isn't spinning out f-fast enough.

It's not working anymore.

Maybe it's dying, which is frustrating
in its own right, but happens.

And so I feel like the error message
could do a better job of diagnosing that.

'Cause when I spit out the, uh, boot
log, error log from my Mac Studio in

macOS and pasted that into Claude,
right away it was like, "Looks like

a hard drive is probably failing."

So I really wish rather
than me sitting there…

'Cause the error that popped up was some
sort of extensions thing, and so I'm

deleting extensions from v-different apps,
emailing apps saying, "Hey, uh, look, I

think your extension for the camera app
that I'm using, Camo, is, uh, causing an

issue and causing my machine to lock up.

Have you ever heard of this?"

in the meantime, I keep troubleshooting
and realize, "No, actually, it's

this hard drive," thanks to Claude.

Which is one place where I feel like
AI-- 'cause I could have pasted that

error log to the internet, and maybe
somebody eventually would, like, read

it for me and be able to decipher that.

But I feel like that's a genuinely
good use of AI to draw upon the vast

knowledge of all the people analyzing
uh, error logs in the history as well as

whatever Apple support has put out into
the world, and telling me that, "Hey,

it's probably a hard drive that's down.

So don't stress about your computer dying.

It's just an external drive."

Which is, yeah, will be its own thing,
Side tangent grievance, if we can go

there, is that the two terabyte SSD
little portable drives that I use for

backing up stuff uh, I paid $160 for
that in 2024, maybe even 2022, and

now that same thing is three to $400.

So thanks AI for that, I guess.

I love-hate this world we've made
In particular, the technology

of it Okay, that's it for
this Petty Grievances episode.

Feel free to commiserate with me
if you want to by replying to the

social media post where you saw or
heard about this episode, or you

can email me, chris.enns@gmail.com.

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And I hope you'll be back tomorrow.

Thanks for listening.

Have a great day.

Bye.