There's nothing benefiting customers from this cable mess. It only enables dishonest businesses, as customers can't tell cables apart until they plug them in and try to use them.
I mean cable with all the features is damn expensive if you compare it to the usual(shitty quality) USB2.0 cables. Most folks would buy cheaper one because difference in prices between USB2.0 and USB-C with all features would be too high. It would feel like a rip-off to them.
The whole idea of "one connector that does everything" is flawed, unless you standardize what "everything" means and give users visual clues. Such as, oh, a different type of connector, like we used to have.
I get precisely ZERO benefit from using a USB-C connector for my monitor, I only get a large amount of pain.
The line I'm trying to stride here is, on the one hand, avoiding what USB-C ended up being, but on the other hand not returning back to the days of feature phones, where you had as many physically and electrically distinct charger and data ports as there were phone models. There must be a sane state somewhere in the middle.
I still remember when the iMac came out with two USB ports, a CD drive, and nothing else. It was a couple of years too early, or did it prove that you could make a successful computer without vital things like a parallel port and a floppy drive?
Since when was USB-C such a major issue on Thinkpads?
The whole catchy idea behind USB-C (unfortunately perpetuated here by people who should know better) is that there is ONE SOCKET, ONE PLUG and ONE CABLE. Oh, the dream of using a single connector.
Unfortunately, this is far from reality and the result is a complete mess, which is why I'm not a big fan of the whole USB-C thing. Especially given that I'm a hostage, because a certain computer company whose computers generally suck the least, decided to show courage by moving to USB-C even though the ecosystem is nowhere near mature — let's put pressure on the manufacturers by getting hostages (oops, "users") on board.
I wish USB-C mandated some sort of connector marking: color strips, or whatever, that would let me figure out what would work.