Originally Posted by
Polaris OBark
My wife just went to England with a few electronics. Her iPhone uses a USB-A to (proprietary) lightning cable, as does her iPad. But her laptop uses a USB-C to proprietary magnetic-safe connection, and can also accept USB-C directly. Her Garmin Watch uses USB-A to proprietary connector. She took my headphones, and I forgot they need to charge via a USB-mini cable, so neglected to send it. (She just hates this stuff and is under a lot of stress because she is attending her brother who lives alone and had multiple strokes, and the last thing she wants to worry about is a huge tangle of assorted cables and a pile of chargers, along with some UK/US plug adaptors.) The chances of her losing half this stuff are significant, and it winds up being a real PITA. Ideally she should only need a USB-C/USB-C cable and a power supply/adapter. One cable standard to rule them all.
I have a box in the garage that has a huge collection of cables and obsolete apple adapters, including Firewire 800 and 400, and and the version 1 iPod (4G, Firewire, mechanical dial). This is just a huge amount of waste. (Time waste, E-waste, space-waste, resources waste ...).
While I totally agree it is a complete mess, at what point do you decide that a single connector is good enough for every application, forever? USB-C is a vast improvement over anything that was available 20 years ago, but will it still cut it in another 20 years? History suggests probably not.
It would have been great if USB-C had been invented in 1960 and adopted as a universal fixed standard moving forward. Then your wife wouldn’t now be faced with these multiple legacy connector issues. But of course the technology didn’t exist in 1960 and I doubt she would be happy if all her current devices used an RS232 connector. Although she would only need one cable.
Edit: I happen to have one of those original iPods with the mechanical scroll wheel and FireWire connector. I dug it out and the first thing that struck me was how big that connector now looks today. There is no way that would work on a modern phone or even a slim laptop!