Charging is one aspect. People are bricking their devices today because everyone loves the center-positive barrel connector. It's used for everything from 3.3

Charging is one aspect. People are bricking their devices today because everyone loves the center-positive barrel connector. It's used for everything from 3.3V to 48V (and maybe even more than that). Plug your 5V device into a 12V supply, rest in peace, device. The shared form factor is nice, though, when you do carefully compare the voltage markings. I have a drawer of random 12V power supplies, and I have no idea if any of my devices are actually using the 12V power supply they came with, and it all works. Meanwhile, the varying form factor for computer parts has never really been a problem. Back in the day, nobody ever tried to connect their VGA monitor to their PS/2 mouse port. But now, thanks to USB-C, many people try that, only to have it fail. They might have to get a new computer or monitor to salvage even one of them, but in the past, it was pretty easy to get something to work. (Still not perfect, of course. You still had to have a graphics card that could drive the monitor at the timings you desired, and sometimes the optimal timings for the monitor weren't achievable with your particular video output. This problem, of course, still affects HDMI, DVI, DisplayPort, and Thunderbolt.) Meanwhile, the ports that were the same caused a lot of confusion. How come you couldn't connect your PS/2 keyboard to the mouse port? All in all, I think Type C is kryptonite for today's economy. Consumers only look at one spec when purchasing peripherals -- the price. To make the lowest price USB type C cable, you simply remove any copper from it that isn't related to charging a phone. That means you end up with people that want to use displayport alt mode, or data transfer, and can't, and have no ability whatsoever to fix the problem themselves. None of this precludes a standard that lets you charge your phone, but it's complicated when you want to use one port to charge your phone, your laptop, your desktop, your monitor, share data, stream video, etc. and USB didn't get this one right. Of course, the industry did even worse without a standard, but it's still terrible.