v1.3.0-beta.1 is up

[darrylmorley]

@jimmyorz @aguilaair @cannotcollide @Caruso8677 @Mostxlnt and anyone else that can help test WhatCable!

New pre-release build is ready: v1.3.0-beta.1

https://github.com/darrylmorley/whatcable/releases/tag/v1.3.0-beta.1

Grab WhatCable.zip from that page, drag the app into Applications, and use your normal Pro licence. Nothing about licensing changes for betas, and this won't show up as an update for anyone on a stable build.

Welcome to the two new testers, @Caruso8677 and @Mostxlnt. Good to have you.

What's in it

• New "USB-IF certified" line on cables that carry a USB-IF certificate, read straight from the cable with no network lookup.
• On desktop Macs, devices on a built-in USB-only front port now show attributed to that port.
• A run of power and charging fixes: stale power-contract wattage is no longer shown as live, and a charger that's plugged in but not being drawn from is now explained rather than flagged as an error.
• MagSafe counted on its own line in the "nothing plugged in" message.
• Live port health counters, a menu-bar popover height fix, and correct labelling for DisplayPort monitors running at 1.62 Gbps (RBR).

Worth a look if you have time

• A certified cable (many Thunderbolt/USB4 cables are): check the new "USB-IF certified" line reads right.
• A desktop Mac (@jimmyorz, your M4 mini): plug something into a front port and confirm it shows up under that port.
• Charging, especially on M1 Pro / M1 (@aguilaair, @Caruso8677): confirm the power lines match reality, particularly the charger-attached cases.
• Thunderbolt 5 gear (@Mostxlnt): anything that looks off with cable speed or link labels.

Even "looks fine on my setup" is genuinely useful, since it tells me a build is healthy across more hardware than just mine. If something turns out to be an actual bug, I'll spin it into its own issue labelled beta so the fix stays findable.

Thanks all.

[jimmyorz]

looks fine on my setup😉

[cannotcollide]

Bit of an interesting one, since I'm not getting the USB-IF marker I was expecting. I'm away from home at the moment so I'm only able to test what I have on hand, which is a CableMatters Thunderbolt 5 Cable with VID 0x2B1D and PID 0x153B.

This isn't necessarily indicative of an issue, since it may just be a cable which does not have an XID/TID from USB-IF. I'll have to do some more testing when I get home on some other cables. If you want to investigate this cable further in the meantime, it's this one: https://www.thunderbolttechnology.net/product/cable-matters-premium-thunderbolt-5-cable

[darrylmorley]

Good catch, and your hunch was right. It is not a bug, but it is more interesting than "cable is not certified".

Your cable does carry a certification ID. It is on your Power-Z screen: CertStat 0x000005fc. That is the field we read. Another anonymous test-kit submission has the same cable reporting the same ID, so it is consistent across machines, not a quirk of yours.

The line does not appear because USB-IF publishes nothing for that ID. I checked both of their routes live today, the full catalogue and the per-ID lookup, and 0x5FC comes back empty in both. Not a staleness problem at my end either: our compiled copy is one cable behind the live catalogue, and that cable is an unrelated 5 Gbps one certified yesterday. So to be straight with you, no update at my end will make that line appear for this cable. There is nothing to look up.

What makes it odd is the neighbours. 0x5FB and 0x5FD are both Lintes cables that resolve fine, so 0x5FC sits in the middle of a run of real Lintes certifications. Reads like an application that was started and never published, with the ID shipped in the firmware anyway. Cable Matters do hold 80 Gbps certifications under other IDs, so it is not a brand thing.

Worth saying too: the Intel page you linked is Thunderbolt certification, which is a separate programme from USB-IF. A cable can pass Intel and never appear in the USB-IF registry.

The real gap this exposes is mine. Right now "no certification ID at all" and "ID present but unpublished" look identical in the app, and the ID is not in the JSON output either, so you had to reach for a hardware meter to see a number the app already had. I will get the raw ID into the JSON for the next beta so this is self-diagnosable.

Chasing this also turned up a genuine bug on my side, so thanks for that. Checking your cable made me test every unresolved ID in the diagnostic corpus against USB-IF, and eleven of them are certified but missing from my compiled copy, Anker and Belkin and Plugable among them. Those cables should be showing a certified line and are not. Fixing that for the next beta too.

[cannotcollide]

Thanks for the thorough explanation, I really appreciate it. I'm now back home and I've found a cable which does provide the USB-IF certified label:

This got me thinking; would it be better to have some sort of checkmark grid to display cable details, rather than a bullet point list? Cables could be given ticks or crosses based on qualities such as USB 2/3/4 compatibility, TBT 3/4/5 compatibility, e-marker presence, PID presence, USB-IF certification, 60/100/240W rating, etc.

The reason I say this is because, despite everything looking good on this description for my setup, there's no indication that a USB-IF listing does not exist for it.

If the cable received an 'X' for USB-IF certification, maybe that would be a bit clearer. An example of this would be how BlackMagic disk speed test handles resolution and frame rate compatibility:

Just my thoughts though, please feel free to disregard if you prefer the current system. You have my support as always!

[darrylmorley]

@cannotcollide good to see the Joinsoon cable showing its certification cleanly.

The grid is a nice idea and I like the Blackmagic reference. For the objective yes/no facts it would work well: USB 2/3/4, e-marker present, wattage tier, Thunderbolt class. Those are genuine ticks and crosses, read straight off the cable.

The one I'd keep out of a grid is USB-IF certification, and it's the same reason your first cable had no line. A missing listing does not mean the cable failed anything. Certification is voluntary, and most cables simply never get an ID, or carry one USB-IF doesn't publish. In the diagnostic data I have, only about one cable in five resolves to a listing at all. So a red cross on that row would brand roughly four good cables in five as failures, Apple's own most of all, when nothing is wrong with any of them. That's why I keep it a positive-only note: shown when there's something real to show, silent otherwise.

You did put your finger on a real gap though. Right now "no certification ID at all" and "has an ID that just isn't published" look identical from the outside. I've put the raw ID into the app's data output so the two can be told apart, and that ships in the next beta. Chasing your cable also turned up a bug where some genuinely certified cables (Anker, Belkin, Plugable and others) weren't showing their line at all. Fixed for the next build too.

So: grid idea noted, and I think it has legs for the objective stuff. Certification stays a note rather than a cross, for the good-cable-gets-an-X reason. Thanks for thinking it through, this is exactly what the beta is for.