I love usb-c to death but "occasional incompatibility with cheap cables" is a bit misleading.

There is frustratingly little relation between price and quality. I have literally spent hundreds of dollars on usb-c-cables and I haven't even attempted to do displayport or thunderbolt through one, and I still don't own any that I'd expect to work on a lot of scenarios.

If price isn’t a primary consideration, get a Thunderbolt 4 cable and be confident it will work everywhere, particularly if it’s an active TB4 cable:

https://chrisbergeron.com/2021/07/25/Ultra-fast-Thunderbolt-...

They cost $30 and still not support 240W. It would be an easier advice to consumer if they were $19.

> They cost $30... It would be an easier advice to consumer if they were $19.

It'd be easier if it were $0 too but what does that have to do with anything? $30 is what it costs to make a cable that can do high speed data, high speed display, and high power. If you want a cable that does all of this it's going to cost more than a cable that doesn't. If you want a cable that's cheaper and doesn't do everything that is also an option. Apart from both options being available anyways this problem has nothing to do with USB standards.

> and still not support 240W

When the brand new standard actually hits the shelf you'll be able to get a TB4 240W cable, as of now there just aren't any 240W cables in general. Also not supported: USB 6 and 2 kW PD or anything else from the future instead of present.

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Type C is an interface specification not a guarantee that you're $19 cable will be compatible everything man could desire to implement in your lifetime.

>Type C is an interface specification not a guarantee that you're $19 cable will be compatible everything man could desire to implement in your lifetime.

Except that is exactly what a lot of people think Type C will and should provide. And whether you agree with that they think or not is an entirely different question.

My other reply https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29452173

Whether people think it will or won't isn't the question - it's not the USB standards that make this ask is impossible.

I’ll second this. I follow this advice and have never been let down.

It's awesome being able to plop down on the couch and plug my laptop into a Nintendo Switch charger, that I also use to chargey phone. Charging a laptop before USB-C was an ordeal because I only had one specialised charger with a proprietary plug. Now I have half a dozen spread around the house and car.

Funny that you mention Nintendo Switch, because Nintendo made a non-standard implementation of usb-c there and connecting console to the standard compliant cable and charger can brick or fry the console. Perfect example of USB-Confusion :)

I never had an issue with bricking but it is a bit hard to find power bricks that output 15V, which is what the dock requires.

The rant about "proprietary chargers" for laptops was also untrue, there was uniform 19V brick-type power supply units with uniform 5.5mm barrel connector for at least 15 years.

We live in a different world. I'd like to live in yours! Prior to usb c my Hp Dell and Lenovo, all in their enterprise line favouring practicality over fashion and looks, all used wildly different chargers. Even Lenovo alone, in that 15 year span, had round and rectangle tips with 12 and 20v.

That's simply not true. I had three different laptops from 2010 to 2021: an Acer Inspiron (I think that's what it was called), a Dell Latitude, and a Surface Pro 3. All used different chargers. The Surface used Microsoft's proprietary magsafe connector, and the others used different-sized barrel jacks. I currently have a Dell XPS 13 which charges over USB-C.

Oddly, the Acer charger was the same as for an Acer 27" monitor I had, which came in handy once or twice.

Charger for monitor? Curiouser and curiouser.

You could call it a power supply, because the monitor obviously had no battery.

Between the proprietary plugs and USB-C, we had the dark ages of micro-USB which somehow always came loose after a few weeks of use

In an initial flurry of enthusiasm I bought a bunch of high-quality cables and I'm very glad I did. I can keep duplicate cables around in certain pockets etc. and I know I can always connect stuff. I had always used default supplier cables and these fancy ones feel much better in daily usage.