Total Nightmare: USB-C and Thunderbolt 3
One interesting thing is that when the port is the same for everything, the port itself (the shape, size, look and whether it matches the other thing you're looking at) ceases to be a useful interface for connecting things together physically. Instead we need other indicators, labels, and on-screen error messages to tell us those things, which is a much more indirect and less clear way of understanding connectivity.Did anyone ever stop to ask if we really wanted everything to go through one port, even if everything wasn't really inter-compatible? I think we had it pretty right before, with a mix of ports, some of which were exclusive to a purpose (like HDMI, power, audio), some of which were generic (like USB, FireWire, Thunderbolt). Now we've removed clarity for what exactly? Aesthetics? "Simplicity?" The technological advancement of a single standard? There could be good reasons, but we should be aware of the usability tradeoff.