This is one of those "it's a bug, not a feature" things. I don't mind having unified connectors so long as we have segregation between powered/unpowered connect

This is one of those "it's a bug, not a feature" things. I don't mind having unified connectors so long as we have segregation between powered/unpowered connections at the cable level. It prevents faults by design. There's no reason that an unpowered device should have the same connector as a powered one, and quite a few reasons why it shouldn't.