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Comment by jakobegger | Hacker News Reader

Because it's useful to have a bunch of multi-purpose ports on a computer. You can attach a mouse, a keyboard, a printer, a hard drive, a screen, a dock, a charger, or whatever you want, all to the same port.

In my experience, finding the right cable has never been an issue. All the USB-C devices I've bought came with a suitable cable in the box.

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It's not the initial cable that's the problem, it's those that come after.

My wife wanted a charger with a longer cable for her phone. We need it to be able to fast charge, which is called a variety of different names on both the phone and charger sides. Can I get the $10 charger, or do I need the $40 charger the size of the MBP charger?

We ended up just biting the bullet and getting one of the more expensive, MBP-charger-shaped chargers, since I have laptops that use USB-C - but it was a confusing mess, and I still wasn't really sure fast charging would work on her phone till I plugged it in the first time.

You needed a $5 AC power extension cord.

Carry around a 3,000 watt mains extension, because someone decided making USB C cables all support 100 watts was just too demanding, eh?

100 watt USB cables are a bit thick and unwieldy since they need to support a current of 5A. They also need better insulation, since they use a higher voltage (up to 20V).

If your phone can only charge at 10 watt (5V / 2A), why would you use a stiff, heavy 100W cable to charge it?

Well sure if it's for a airconditioned-hottub-phone, but I'm pretty sure a small 600 watt cable would be more cost effective here.

> In my experience, finding the right cable has never been an issue. All the USB-C devices I've bought came with a suitable cable in the box.

Which is fine, until you need you need a new cable. When I lost the cable for my phone, finding a cable I could trust was a pain.

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