USB went from being the universal bus, to just being the universal connector. There are never any guarantees that your device (or cable!) actually supports the operation you’re trying
How about by using different ports? Imagine if instead of playing whack a mole with 4 usb-c ports on my laptop, 2 usb c ports on my monitor and a bag of cables, I could plug a cable that fits into the port it fits into?
That would just be worse: the port being backwards compatible is a feature, being able to plug a 5Gbps device into a 20G-capable-port is a good thing, so is being able to plug a self-powered device into a PD-capable port.
The issue is the difficulty of matching the cable with the device (and port) to ensure the upper bounds match. Obviously you could get the highest-rated cables but there are tradeoffs in length and flexibility, using a 2x2 PD 3.1 cable to plug in a keyboard is just a waste of money and simply results in lower convenience (as the 2x2 PD 3.1 cable will be shorter and more rigid than a USB 2.0 low-power cable).
That could be an argument for "different ports" being backwards-compatible "poka-yoke" (mistake-proofing) ports, but historically these have had really shitty design (e.g. m.2 tabs are plain misdesigned) and they would have required significantly increasing the size of the plugs to make room for the hardware features.
I disagree. In my cable/charger box I have 4 USB-c chargers with 4 USB-c cables, and they're not interchangeable for all intents and purposes. I've ended up sharpieing what device they belong to rather than reading the specs printed on the back of the charger, because otherwise I end up trickle charging devices (and thankfully I don't use a USB c dock, or I would be in all sorts of hurt.
> The issue is the difficulty of matching the cable with the device (and port) to ensure the upper bounds match.
If that were the only problem then sure I would agree that things are worse, however in the real world manufacturers ship both devices and cables that are missing features, underperform, and are labelled as "USB 3"
They now contain their own chips. Right? So there's gotta be some kind of POST. Right?
If so, I should be able to ask the cord what it can do, if it thinks its broken, etc.
The moment they added backwards compatibility, the USB confusion started. That's not a bad thing, the real problems are manufacturers being vague about what they do and do not support and the USB people renaming everything every other year.
Recently, I tried to find a Displayport-compatible cable and went through three (admittedly on the cheap side) cables that claimed to support it but didn't - in the end, I just bought a certified Thunderbolt 3 cable to avoid any ambiguity in whether they included all the wires or not
A thunderbolt 3 cable has two microcontrollers in the cable itself!