USB Type-C is still a mess
I remember arguing with people when Type-C was new; they told me it would change the world, I told them it would never work.<p>The problem is... they made everything optional, and thus when a user sees a Type-C port, they have no idea what to expect.  Will it work with a device that requires Thunderbolt?  Will it drive a DisplayPort monitor?  Will this charger charge their laptop?  Will this charger charge their phone?<p>The answer to any of those questions is &quot;it depends&quot;.  Many Type C ports do DisplayPort.  Many don&#x27;t.  Many Type C chargers will charge something that needs 5V, but not something that needs a higher voltage.  The end result is that you end up with thousands of devices with the same physical connector that can&#x27;t actually operate with each other.<p>My favorite USB C device is Wacom&#x27;s Intuos Pro pen tablet thingie.  It has 3 Type C ports and needs DisplayPort input, USB 2.0, and 20V power.  So there is not a computer in the world that you can plug it into with one cable, because I&#x27;ve never seen a computer that can output 20V over Type C.  To get around that it, it has three ports and ships with a power brick... so you have two Type C cables going into it at a minimum.  So close... if only they would accept 5V power.  (I did some measurements and it uses only a tiny amount of power that is well under what can be supplied with  5V, but they appear to have reused the power delivery subsystem from their nearly-identical laptops, which do really need a lot of power to charge the battery.)<p>I don&#x27;t see the situation improving.  When you have 3 versions of power delivery and at least 4 &quot;alternate modes&quot; to implement, nobody is ever going to implement them all.  So people will always be connecting Type C peripherals to Type C computers and being disappointed.  And there is no way for the user to predict what works, because it&#x27;s not like anyone shares specifications of what&#x27;s required (&quot;this monitor needs 20V and DisplayPort Alternate Mode&quot;) (&quot;this computer can supply 100W, and implements USB 3.1, DisplayPort Alternate Mode and HDMI Alternate Mode&quot;).<p>It failed.  I look forward to USB Type D that has a more durable connector and doesn&#x27;t allow &quot;optional&quot; extensions.  Maybe that will work.  But for now, it looks like I will be struggling with upside-down Type A connectors for the next ten years.  Sigh.