Look very carefully before buying one of these things. The specifications can be tricky to understand, and worse, they may not even work on Macs with newer OS versions. I recently bought a TB 3 dock from OWC. But you have to download software for high power delivery. But on Catalina, Apple doesn’t allow that software to install, so no power delivery.
i took some time to decide which dock to buy, and even though I paid $300 (on sale), not every feature works for such an expensive device.
be careful, just seeing a list of features doesn’t tell you that they will work as expected, or at all.
There's a reason that we explicitly recommended the Caldigit TS3+.
The CalDigit had a similar software issue but that meant getting 2W less of power, 85W vs 87W. I assume they ship with the new firmware now.
The CalDigit case is all metal with heat dissipation fins which is important feature when delivering 87W of power, since the unit can get hot when its supplying power to a computer along with several other devices. The unit will sit vertical or horizontal depending on the layout of your work space, which helps to maximize port access and heat dissipation. The power supply is separate from the unit.
The only downside when using the unit with a laptop is that both TB3 ports are on the back. So if you want the audio ports and the card slot facing forward the cable has to be wrapped around the back, which really shortens the distance if you want to use the 40Gbps cable with full USB compatibility. The other option is to use a longer 20Gbps cable or the 40Gbps that has marginal USB speeds.
What you want is an active longer cable, not a passive one. The six-foot TB3 active cables have full USB speeds.
Do you have any documentation to support this. I haven't seen this in any AI articles nor can I find reference to it anywhere other than a single active 2m TB cable sold by CalDigit and that's only if its connected to a TB3 dock, which is what I want.
Your own article doesn't seem to support this cali either.
PSA: Thunderbolt 3 cables longer than 0.5m generally don't support USB 3.1 speeds
"Here at AppleInsider, we've settled on two brands of long, active, Thunderbolt 3 cables: the 60W Cable Matters 6.6-foot and 100W CalDigit 1 meter and 2 meter cables. They aren't cheap — but SCSI veterans and FireWire users know where we're coming from regarding that. We willingly sacrifice USB 3.1 Type-C compatibility to guarantee that we're getting max bandwidth to our docks and eGPUs."
The table does support what I'm saying. USB 3.0 is contained within the Thunderbolt 3 protocol, so the 40Gbps total bandwidth allowed is the key factor when going Thunderbolt 3 host to Thunderbolt 3 peripheral. All this table is saying is if you use an active 40Gbit/sec Thunderbolt 3 cable as a USB type C cable without the Thunderbolt 3 protocol, you'll only get USB 2.0 speeds.
The article you cite is three years old, and things have changed a bit. That said, we still recommend the CalDigit cable, and you will get 5Gbit or 10Gbit/sec speeds from USB type A or USB type C ports on a downstream Thunderbolt 3 dock.
Other than a few obscure notes here and there it's difficult to find anything in writing when it comes to USB support over a TB3 dock connection using an active cable. Yes the article is old but I cannot find any article that clearly explains this feature, which is why I was confused to begin with. Do all active cables support this feature? Also what has changed about the TB3 standard since it came out and why does Apple to appear to have a Pro cable that does support USB direct to device?
Maybe it's time for an updated article to clear explain Thunderbolt 3 and again its relationship to Thunderbolt 4, to include the passive and active cables. I understand how all of it works but this one point regarding the active cables is really confusing, since it's not well documented. I still haven't found an article in AI that claims this capability. I'm not even sure that many of the people who sell these cables are clear on this because I don't see it in the product documentation for most active cables.
Okay, so. What's changed since this article was published is Titan Ridge. Long, Active TB3 cables using the Titan Ridge transceiver chipset support full USB 10gbit/second speeds when NOT used as a Thunderbolt 3 cable. The previous Alpine Ridge chipset was the speed-limiting factor here. Apple's cable is a Titan Ridge cable, but using it to connect to a USB 3.2 Type C peripheral is really expensive overkill when a $10 cable will do the same thing.
As long as you have a combination with the full 40 gbit/sec as seen on the chart above, regardless of generation, a TB3 host (your computer) and TB3 peripheral (dock, drive, or eGPU) will connect at full speed. Delivered speeds of USB peripherals connected to the dock (which has its own USB controller) will not be compromised.
There are short, passive cables like the ones that ship with most docks. At the meter or two-meter point, to get that full 40gbit/sec with TB3, you have to have that active cable. This changes with TB4 -- but we're waiting until devices with it actually ship to discuss this.
For what it's worth, this chart linked above was pulled directly out of the Thunderbolt 3 spec.
The key takeaways today are this:
• As long as you're connecting with Thunderbolt 3 with a (short & passive) or (long & active) cable from a Thunderbolt 3 computer to a Thunderbolt 3 dock, you're fine with USB speeds, as the USB protocol is completely contained within the Thunderbolt 3 specification.
• It gets janky if you're using a TB3 cable of unknown provenance to connect with a USB 3.1 peripheral directly and not through a dock. Don't do this, because Thunderbolt 3 cables are expensive.
Look very carefully before buying one of these things. The specifications can be tricky to understand, and worse, they may not even work on Macs with newer OS versions. I recently bought a TB 3 dock from OWC. But you have to download software for high power delivery. But on Catalina, Apple doesn’t allow that software to install, so no power delivery.
i took some time to decide which dock to buy, and even though I paid $300 (on sale), not every feature works for such an expensive device.
be careful, just seeing a list of features doesn’t tell you that they will work as expected, or at all.
There's a reason that we explicitly recommended the Caldigit TS3+.
The CalDigit had a similar software issue but that meant getting 2W less of power, 85W vs 87W. I assume they ship with the new firmware now.
The CalDigit case is all metal with heat dissipation fins which is important feature when delivering 87W of power, since the unit can get hot when its supplying power to a computer along with several other devices. The unit will sit vertical or horizontal depending on the layout of your work space, which helps to maximize port access and heat dissipation. The power supply is separate from the unit.
The only downside when using the unit with a laptop is that both TB3 ports are on the back. So if you want the audio ports and the card slot facing forward the cable has to be wrapped around the back, which really shortens the distance if you want to use the 40Gbps cable with full USB compatibility. The other option is to use a longer 20Gbps cable or the 40Gbps that has marginal USB speeds.
What you want is an active longer cable, not a passive one. The six-foot TB3 active cables have full USB speeds.
Do you have any documentation to support this. I haven't seen this in any AI articles nor can I find reference to it anywhere other than a single active 2m TB cable sold by CalDigit and that's only if its connected to a TB3 dock, which is what I want.
Your own article doesn't seem to support this cali either.
PSA: Thunderbolt 3 cables longer than 0.5m generally don't support USB 3.1 speeds
"Here at AppleInsider, we've settled on two brands of long, active, Thunderbolt 3 cables: the 60W Cable Matters 6.6-foot and 100W CalDigit 1 meter and 2 meter cables. They aren't cheap — but SCSI veterans and FireWire users know where we're coming from regarding that. We willingly sacrifice USB 3.1 Type-C compatibility to guarantee that we're getting max bandwidth to our docks and eGPUs."
The table does support what I'm saying. USB 3.0 is contained within the Thunderbolt 3 protocol, so the 40Gbps total bandwidth allowed is the key factor when going Thunderbolt 3 host to Thunderbolt 3 peripheral. All this table is saying is if you use an active 40Gbit/sec Thunderbolt 3 cable as a USB type C cable without the Thunderbolt 3 protocol, you'll only get USB 2.0 speeds.
The article you cite is three years old, and things have changed a bit. That said, we still recommend the CalDigit cable, and you will get 5Gbit or 10Gbit/sec speeds from USB type A or USB type C ports on a downstream Thunderbolt 3 dock.
Other than a few obscure notes here and there it's difficult to find anything in writing when it comes to USB support over a TB3 dock connection using an active cable. Yes the article is old but I cannot find any article that clearly explains this feature, which is why I was confused to begin with. Do all active cables support this feature? Also what has changed about the TB3 standard since it came out and why does Apple to appear to have a Pro cable that does support USB direct to device?
Maybe it's time for an updated article to clear explain Thunderbolt 3 and again its relationship to Thunderbolt 4, to include the passive and active cables. I understand how all of it works but this one point regarding the active cables is really confusing, since it's not well documented. I still haven't found an article in AI that claims this capability. I'm not even sure that many of the people who sell these cables are clear on this because I don't see it in the product documentation for most active cables.
Okay, so. What's changed since this article was published is Titan Ridge. Long, Active TB3 cables using the Titan Ridge transceiver chipset support full USB 10gbit/second speeds when NOT used as a Thunderbolt 3 cable. The previous Alpine Ridge chipset was the speed-limiting factor here. Apple's cable is a Titan Ridge cable, but using it to connect to a USB 3.2 Type C peripheral is really expensive overkill when a $10 cable will do the same thing.
As long as you have a combination with the full 40 gbit/sec as seen on the chart above, regardless of generation, a TB3 host (your computer) and TB3 peripheral (dock, drive, or eGPU) will connect at full speed. Delivered speeds of USB peripherals connected to the dock (which has its own USB controller) will not be compromised.
There are short, passive cables like the ones that ship with most docks. At the meter or two-meter point, to get that full 40gbit/sec with TB3, you have to have that active cable. This changes with TB4 -- but we're waiting until devices with it actually ship to discuss this.
For what it's worth, this chart linked above was pulled directly out of the Thunderbolt 3 spec.
The key takeaways today are this:
• As long as you're connecting with Thunderbolt 3 with a (short & passive) or (long & active) cable from a Thunderbolt 3 computer to a Thunderbolt 3 dock, you're fine with USB speeds, as the USB protocol is completely contained within the Thunderbolt 3 specification.
• It gets janky if you're using a TB3 cable of unknown provenance to connect with a USB 3.1 peripheral directly and not through a dock. Don't do this, because Thunderbolt 3 cables are expensive.
I'm also seeing 3-4 ft PASSIVE 40Gbps cables with TB3 and USB-4 compatibility for $25. Any truth to this? Appears to be a TB4 cable by the specs.
"We use the latest technology, and it's USB-IF Certification Thunderbolt 3 Cable.It Support USB 4.0,40 Gbps, 5K or double 4K.
Look very carefully before buying one of these things. The specifications can be tricky to understand, and worse, they may not even work on Macs with newer OS versions. I recently bought a TB 3 dock from OWC. But you have to download software for high power delivery. But on Catalina, Apple doesn’t allow that software to install, so no power delivery.
i took some time to decide which dock to buy, and even though I paid $300 (on sale), not every feature works for such an expensive device.
be careful, just seeing a list of features doesn’t tell you that they will work as expected, or at all.
There's a reason that we explicitly recommended the Caldigit TS3+.
The CalDigit had a similar software issue but that meant getting 2W less of power, 85W vs 87W. I assume they ship with the new firmware now.
The CalDigit case is all metal with heat dissipation fins which is important feature when delivering 87W of power, since the unit can get hot when its supplying power to a computer along with several other devices. The unit will sit vertical or horizontal depending on the layout of your work space, which helps to maximize port access and heat dissipation. The power supply is separate from the unit.
The only downside when using the unit with a laptop is that both TB3 ports are on the back. So if you want the audio ports and the card slot facing forward the cable has to be wrapped around the back, which really shortens the distance if you want to use the 40Gbps cable with full USB compatibility. The other option is to use a longer 20Gbps cable or the 40Gbps that has marginal USB speeds.
What you want is an active longer cable, not a passive one. The six-foot TB3 active cables have full USB speeds.
Do you have any documentation to support this. I haven't seen this in any AI articles nor can I find reference to it anywhere other than a single active 2m TB cable sold by CalDigit and that's only if its connected to a TB3 dock, which is what I want.
Your own article doesn't seem to support this cali either.
PSA: Thunderbolt 3 cables longer than 0.5m generally don't support USB 3.1 speeds
"Here at AppleInsider, we've settled on two brands of long, active, Thunderbolt 3 cables: the 60W Cable Matters 6.6-foot and 100W CalDigit 1 meter and 2 meter cables. They aren't cheap — but SCSI veterans and FireWire users know where we're coming from regarding that. We willingly sacrifice USB 3.1 Type-C compatibility to guarantee that we're getting max bandwidth to our docks and eGPUs."
The table does support what I'm saying. USB 3.0 is contained within the Thunderbolt 3 protocol, so the 40Gbps total bandwidth allowed is the key factor when going Thunderbolt 3 host to Thunderbolt 3 peripheral. All this table is saying is if you use an active 40Gbit/sec Thunderbolt 3 cable as a USB type C cable without the Thunderbolt 3 protocol, you'll only get USB 2.0 speeds.
The article you cite is three years old, and things have changed a bit. That said, we still recommend the CalDigit cable, and you will get 5Gbit or 10Gbit/sec speeds from USB type A or USB type C ports on a downstream Thunderbolt 3 dock.
Other than a few obscure notes here and there it's difficult to find anything in writing when it comes to USB support over a TB3 dock connection using an active cable. Yes the article is old but I cannot find any article that clearly explains this feature, which is why I was confused to begin with. Do all active cables support this feature? Also what has changed about the TB3 standard since it came out and why does Apple to appear to have a Pro cable that does support USB direct to device?
Maybe it's time for an updated article to clear explain Thunderbolt 3 and again its relationship to Thunderbolt 4, to include the passive and active cables. I understand how all of it works but this one point regarding the active cables is really confusing, since it's not well documented. I still haven't found an article in AI that claims this capability. I'm not even sure that many of the people who sell these cables are clear on this because I don't see it in the product documentation for most active cables.
Okay, so. What's changed since this article was published is Titan Ridge. Long, Active TB3 cables using the Titan Ridge transceiver chipset support full USB 10gbit/second speeds when NOT used as a Thunderbolt 3 cable. The previous Alpine Ridge chipset was the speed-limiting factor here. Apple's cable is a Titan Ridge cable, but using it to connect to a USB 3.2 Type C peripheral is really expensive overkill when a $10 cable will do the same thing.
As long as you have a combination with the full 40 gbit/sec as seen on the chart above, regardless of generation, a TB3 host (your computer) and TB3 peripheral (dock, drive, or eGPU) will connect at full speed. Delivered speeds of USB peripherals connected to the dock (which has its own USB controller) will not be compromised.
There are short, passive cables like the ones that ship with most docks. At the meter or two-meter point, to get that full 40gbit/sec with TB3, you have to have that active cable. This changes with TB4 -- but we're waiting until devices with it actually ship to discuss this.
For what it's worth, this chart linked above was pulled directly out of the Thunderbolt 3 spec.
The key takeaways today are this:
• As long as you're connecting with Thunderbolt 3 with a (short & passive) or (long & active) cable from a Thunderbolt 3 computer to a Thunderbolt 3 dock, you're fine with USB speeds, as the USB protocol is completely contained within the Thunderbolt 3 specification.
• It gets janky if you're using a TB3 cable of unknown provenance to connect with a USB 3.1 peripheral directly and not through a dock. Don't do this, because Thunderbolt 3 cables are expensive.
I'm also seeing 3-4 ft PASSIVE 40Gbps cables with TB3 and USB-4 compatibility for $25. Any truth to this? Appears to be a TB4 cable by the specs.
"We use the latest technology, and it's USB-IF Certification Thunderbolt 3 Cable.It Support USB 4.0,40 Gbps, 5K or double 4K.
Look very carefully before buying one of these things. The specifications can be tricky to understand, and worse, they may not even work on Macs with newer OS versions. I recently bought a TB 3 dock from OWC. But you have to download software for high power delivery. But on Catalina, Apple doesn’t allow that software to install, so no power delivery.
i took some time to decide which dock to buy, and even though I paid $300 (on sale), not every feature works for such an expensive device.
be careful, just seeing a list of features doesn’t tell you that they will work as expected, or at all.
There's a reason that we explicitly recommended the Caldigit TS3+.
The CalDigit had a similar software issue but that meant getting 2W less of power, 85W vs 87W. I assume they ship with the new firmware now.
The CalDigit case is all metal with heat dissipation fins which is important feature when delivering 87W of power, since the unit can get hot when its supplying power to a computer along with several other devices. The unit will sit vertical or horizontal depending on the layout of your work space, which helps to maximize port access and heat dissipation. The power supply is separate from the unit.
The only downside when using the unit with a laptop is that both TB3 ports are on the back. So if you want the audio ports and the card slot facing forward the cable has to be wrapped around the back, which really shortens the distance if you want to use the 40Gbps cable with full USB compatibility. The other option is to use a longer 20Gbps cable or the 40Gbps that has marginal USB speeds.
What you want is an active longer cable, not a passive one. The six-foot TB3 active cables have full USB speeds.
Do you have any documentation to support this. I haven't seen this in any AI articles nor can I find reference to it anywhere other than a single active 2m TB cable sold by CalDigit and that's only if its connected to a TB3 dock, which is what I want.
Your own article doesn't seem to support this cali either.
PSA: Thunderbolt 3 cables longer than 0.5m generally don't support USB 3.1 speeds
"Here at AppleInsider, we've settled on two brands of long, active, Thunderbolt 3 cables: the 60W Cable Matters 6.6-foot and 100W CalDigit 1 meter and 2 meter cables. They aren't cheap — but SCSI veterans and FireWire users know where we're coming from regarding that. We willingly sacrifice USB 3.1 Type-C compatibility to guarantee that we're getting max bandwidth to our docks and eGPUs."
The table does support what I'm saying. USB 3.0 is contained within the Thunderbolt 3 protocol, so the 40Gbps total bandwidth allowed is the key factor when going Thunderbolt 3 host to Thunderbolt 3 peripheral. All this table is saying is if you use an active 40Gbit/sec Thunderbolt 3 cable as a USB type C cable without the Thunderbolt 3 protocol, you'll only get USB 2.0 speeds.
The article you cite is three years old, and things have changed a bit. That said, we still recommend the CalDigit cable, and you will get 5Gbit or 10Gbit/sec speeds from USB type A or USB type C ports on a downstream Thunderbolt 3 dock.
Other than a few obscure notes here and there it's difficult to find anything in writing when it comes to USB support over a TB3 dock connection using an active cable. Yes the article is old but I cannot find any article that clearly explains this feature, which is why I was confused to begin with. Do all active cables support this feature? Also what has changed about the TB3 standard since it came out and why does Apple to appear to have a Pro cable that does support USB direct to device?
Maybe it's time for an updated article to clear explain Thunderbolt 3 and again its relationship to Thunderbolt 4, to include the passive and active cables. I understand how all of it works but this one point regarding the active cables is really confusing, since it's not well documented. I still haven't found an article in AI that claims this capability. I'm not even sure that many of the people who sell these cables are clear on this because I don't see it in the product documentation for most active cables.
Okay, so. What's changed since this article was published is Titan Ridge. Long, Active TB3 cables using the Titan Ridge transceiver chipset support full USB 10gbit/second speeds when NOT used as a Thunderbolt 3 cable. The previous Alpine Ridge chipset was the speed-limiting factor here. Apple's cable is a Titan Ridge cable, but using it to connect to a USB 3.2 Type C peripheral is really expensive overkill when a $10 cable will do the same thing.
As long as you have a combination with the full 40 gbit/sec as seen on the chart above, regardless of generation, a TB3 host (your computer) and TB3 peripheral (dock, drive, or eGPU) will connect at full speed. Delivered speeds of USB peripherals connected to the dock (which has its own USB controller) will not be compromised.
There are short, passive cables like the ones that ship with most docks. At the meter or two-meter point, to get that full 40gbit/sec with TB3, you have to have that active cable. This changes with TB4 -- but we're waiting until devices with it actually ship to discuss this.
For what it's worth, this chart linked above was pulled directly out of the Thunderbolt 3 spec.
The key takeaways today are this:
• As long as you're connecting with Thunderbolt 3 with a (short & passive) or (long & active) cable from a Thunderbolt 3 computer to a Thunderbolt 3 dock, you're fine with USB speeds, as the USB protocol is completely contained within the Thunderbolt 3 specification.
• It gets janky if you're using a TB3 cable of unknown provenance to connect with a USB 3.1 peripheral directly and not through a dock. Don't do this, because Thunderbolt 3 cables are expensive.
I'm also seeing 3-4 ft PASSIVE 40Gbps cables with TB3 and USB-4 compatibility for $25. Any truth to this? Appears to be a TB4 cable by the specs.
"We use the latest technology, and it's USB-IF Certification Thunderbolt 3 Cable.It Support USB 4.0,40 Gbps, 5K or double 4K.
Given that there are no certification paths for USB or Thunderbolt 4 that I am aware of, the claims seem iffy.
I’m going afk for a week. I’ll make some calls when I get back.
Thanks! Thats great. I've spotted at least three cables from three different companies like this one Amazon with enough reviews (confirmed purchase) to think its real.
In the comments on Amazon they say its an Active Thunderbolt 3 cable but it's not in the specs on the page.
Well, it’s nice to see you guys reading the site. It would have been nice if you sent emails to people who bought the model though. I bought it recently, and there’s just no way to know that new software is out. Now, to fix the problem with the Softraid eject download...
SoftRaid is ok when flexibility is required but I've always preferred a hardware RAID since they can rebuild without a computer. OWC's line of hardware RAIDs was weak until the acquisition of Akito resolved that issue.
Ironically, software raids are faster than hardware raids. Long ago, it used to be the other way around. Softraid is very good. I’m not worrying about rebuilding without a computer.
I just prefer it to be separate. A hardware RAIDs primary functions won't be affected crowley said:
And the other side too, look at how to A and C are not centred on the same line. Misalignment.
I fail to see how that affects the use of the device. You're going to have real trouble finding a dock with perfect vertical and horizontal alignment. Even the OWC model has a similar relationship between the USB-C and USB-A ports.
Of course it doesn't affect the use of the device, I never said it did. I find the OWC and Elgato offerings imperfect, but less jarring than the CalDigit.
Look very carefully before buying one of these things. The specifications can be tricky to understand, and worse, they may not even work on Macs with newer OS versions. I recently bought a TB 3 dock from OWC. But you have to download software for high power delivery. But on Catalina, Apple doesn’t allow that software to install, so no power delivery.
i took some time to decide which dock to buy, and even though I paid $300 (on sale), not every feature works for such an expensive device.
be careful, just seeing a list of features doesn’t tell you that they will work as expected, or at all.
Do all 5 USB-A ports provide high power delivery or just some of them?
Only one I believe. I asked OWC about high power delivery before I bought, for use with a rehoused Apple SSD. They assured me it worked. It doesn't even see any of the USB-A ports [after the recent Dock Ejector update]. Ethernet now works after the software update. SD slot works! Proceed with caution!
[Edit after reading comment from OWC Tim] There is no way to know if the software was installed correctly, other than nothing will connect/work!
I don't even need TB speeds! I want to connect a USB-A cable [eg Apple SSD, Seagate portable drives with USB-A cables, HP printer] to an OWC dock and be able to see the device with a MacBook Air with a USB-C port. I didn't expect this to be so difficult.
Comments
As long as you have a combination with the full 40 gbit/sec as seen on the chart above, regardless of generation, a TB3 host (your computer) and TB3 peripheral (dock, drive, or eGPU) will connect at full speed. Delivered speeds of USB peripherals connected to the dock (which has its own USB controller) will not be compromised.
For what it's worth, this chart linked above was pulled directly out of the Thunderbolt 3 spec.
The key takeaways today are this:
• As long as you're connecting with Thunderbolt 3 with a (short & passive) or (long & active) cable from a Thunderbolt 3 computer to a Thunderbolt 3 dock, you're fine with USB speeds, as the USB protocol is completely contained within the Thunderbolt 3 specification.
• It gets janky if you're using a TB3 cable of unknown provenance to connect with a USB 3.1 peripheral directly and not through a dock. Don't do this, because Thunderbolt 3 cables are expensive.
I'm also seeing 3-4 ft PASSIVE 40Gbps cables with TB3 and USB-4 compatibility for $25. Any truth to this? Appears to be a TB4 cable by the specs.
"We use the latest technology, and it's USB-IF Certification Thunderbolt 3 Cable.It Support USB 4.0,40 Gbps, 5K or double 4K.
Thunderbolt 3 Cable 3.93Ft/5K/40Gbps, Maxonar USB C 4.0 TB3 Cable 20V/5A 100W Supports Single 5K 60hz or 2X 4K 60hz Monitor, External SSD, eGpu (External Gpu), USB-C Docking Station
https://www.amazon.com/Thunderbolt-Maxonar-Supports-Monitor-External/dp/B08C4M6BVZ/ref=psdc_6795232011_t4_B07WXQT9P8
I’m going afk for a week. I’ll make some calls when I get back.
In the comments on Amazon they say its an Active Thunderbolt 3 cable but it's not in the specs on the page.
Of course it's trivial.
[Edit after reading comment from OWC Tim] There is no way to know if the software was installed correctly, other than nothing will connect/work!
I don't even need TB speeds! I want to connect a USB-A cable [eg Apple SSD, Seagate portable drives with USB-A cables, HP printer] to an OWC dock and be able to see the device with a MacBook Air with a USB-C port. I didn't expect this to be so difficult.