So i tried to connect steamdeck to pc using usb and i read its immpossible because steamdeck is a computer and some explanation on quora about strong master slave relationship. But then why is it possible for android phones to connect to pc whilist also having the ability to use USB and other usb c accesories. Also why cant it be a toggle? So that you can change whetewer this usb( or device ) is reciving data ot sending data .
The reason you can’t is “because Intel deliberately designed it that way”. Back when USB was just a notion, PDAs were a really cool thing. There was apparently concern at Intel that someday these little things might be all that someone might own. You might connect your PDA directly to the printer, rather than syncing it to your Intel Desktop and printing from there. You might connect your PDA to the modem and collect electronic mailographs directly, instead of syncing with a PC. If you could do enough without the PC middleman, you might even skip on buying an Intel computer altogether.
So, Intel baked into the protocol anything they could think of to make peer-to-peer communications impossible in USB, make life easy for the singular PC communications master, and put a timing onus on devices that forced them to be dumbed-down state machines instead of computers in their own right.
Is there anything to support this? I couldn’t find anything that really has this intend documented and Intel weren’t the only on pushing for usb as the most simple protocol possible ( I recall a lot of excitement about the “u” part… How naive at least I was back then!).
I’m not knowledgeable enough to really argue against it, looking simply from an Okham point of view as “they wanted everything to connect” - the printer in the same way as that PDA… Plus Intels de facto (IT) world domination at the time it just seems unlikely.
Edit: some sentences didn’t make even less sense, fixed.