Charging is only one of the things USB-C is capable of. But most people aren’t complaining about that;[a] they’re complaining about the “alternate modes” such a

Charging is only one of the things USB-C is capable of. But most people aren’t complaining about that;[a] they’re complaining about the “alternate modes” such as DisplayPort, Thunderbolt, etc. And if one wants to use those “alternate modes,” you can’t use any old cable; you need specific ones capable of them. It should be obvious why this is a problem: just because two cables look identical, they may not be. And not even that! There’s also the problem of bad cables. If the USB Consortium actually cared about consumer safety, they would aggressively enforce their trademark against cables falsely advertising what they’re capable of. But they don’t. Remember Benson Leung? The guy who was testing USB-C cables from Amazon so you wouldn’t have to? And then one cable ended up being so bad, it fried his Pixel Chromebook.[0] Not good. TL;DR: USB-C was supposed to be “one connector to rule them all,” and it succeeded at the expense of consumer confusion and possible harm. [0]: https://www.amazon.com/review/R2XDBFUD9CTN2R/ https://www.amazon.com/review/R2XDBFUD9CTN2R/ [a]: Except for maybe the people who don’t understand the basics of USB-PD