Not every USB-A port, device, cable, and power supply are compatible. I'm not sure I understand what his point is. That people who refuse to do research are going to occasionally run into incompatibility problems? Like they have since the dawn of the computing age? And?
I'm sure that an out of spec USB 2 cable can cause damage as well.
But see http://www.computerworld.com/article/3133627/technology-law-...
The really crazy thing is that there's very little reason to build crappy cables. Per unit, your savings from cutting major corners are as close to zero as you can get. Judging by Benson Leung's Surjtech[0] testing woes, even cutting out any QA testing to save money wouldn't be sufficient to explain all of the cable problems. QA testing certainly can't explain how you can completely forget to wire in the SuperSpeed wires despite labeling it as such. That's not the sort of thing to happen as a one-off. Losing your sales channels, facing potential class action lawsuits, and seeing your brand dragged through the mud all add up to far more significant costs.
The biggest problem, IMO, will be when USB-C becomes prevalent enough that we see the $1 cables in checkout lines and gas stations. If there's anywhere we're going to see bad cables being hocked, it's there. Hopefully by that point, manufacturers will have gotten burned enough that good QA will become the norm.
0. http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2016/02/google-engineer-finds...
It's true that USB has always been a bit confusing, but now we have many, many more incompatibilities to worry about.
While strictly true and you could drag up some pretty bad abuses of USB A especially as used for mobile charging, the peripherals / protocols usually just work. But here, if you have a cable in your hand with a USB-C and a DisplayPort connector it's pretty much anyone's guess whether a) it'll work with the given machine at all b) if it does, which version of DP will be supported with the given machine.
I'm confused the scenario you're imagining in which someone both doesn't have their own, known good cable, and also is in a place that doesn't provide a cable, where displayport would even come into play.
I can think of exactly 0. If the projector needs a displayport capable usb-c, it's going to already be attached to the projector. If I need one for home, I'm going to buy one that supports it.
If there are 8 different cable types I'd rather have 8 different connectors, yes. Remember going around the office asking to borrow a cable to charge your 'phone and having to figure out micro vs mini vs sony's weird thing vs apple's weird thing? It was a bit silly but at least having physically different connectors meant that you could tell whether a given cable would charge your phone or not. Now it sounds like that's no longer true.