To be honest, USB 3 was already a loss in some aspects: USB 2 allowed for extremely thin USB drives (as thick as the inner part of the plug); several keyboards

To be honest, USB 3 was already a loss in some aspects: USB 2 allowed for extremely thin USB drives (as thick as the inner part of the plug); several keyboards had plugs, cables were thin, all sorts of gadgets were made. With USB 3, the extra pins required extra thickness; the beefier requirements made many cables shorter and thicker, and connectors diminished in number (due to more expensive constraints). The extra pins introduced new failure modes (I had a pen drive with internal bent pins, very hard to see, impossible to repair), but at least most people respected the color conventions (blue). If only color coding was used to help disambiguate some USB C features, that might help somewhat. When buying USB-C cables, I have between $5 and $125 for the same length; the vendor lists all kinds of features (power delivery, Thunderbolt 3, what else) but things simply do not work in the end. Overall, the whimsical Cambrian explosion of USB 2 and all sorts of funny pen drives and gadgets started dying with USB 3, and I'm not expecting to see it return with USB-C. With increasing power demands and what not, maybe we'll soon see wall plugs with USB-C instead of ordinary plugs. At least international travelers won't need adapters anymore...