Not having ports with constant capabilities is a source of customer dissatisfaction when devices work when plugged in independently but not together.

Consider for instance the new 14" and 16" MacBook pros: They got rid of the 4th Thunderbolt port in favor of an HDMI port, likely because of internal bandwith constraints. They could have kept Thunderbolt and HDMI, and only have one Thunderbolt port on the right side work when HDMI is plugged in, but they didn't, because having your external drive work only when your monitor is unplugged is unintuitive.

They were right originally when then went usb-c only. You could output hdmi on any port or do anything else with the port. We had gotten to the point where most offices had a usb-c adapter on the end of every loose hdmi cable so it wasn't an issue.

You mean Thunderbolt only. Not USB-C. Let's credit Apple for what they actually did, which was to go with the non-shitty port from the beginning even though it was expensive and everyone mocked them for doing so.

doesnt §4.6 of the USB-C spec show the precedence of power source usage? I.E. there is no 10W option, just 3A, 1.5A, 0.9A, 0.5A at 5V or 15W, 7.5W, 4.5W, or 2.5W. so then your 15W port turns into 2x 7.5W ports or 3x 5W ports. I dont know if you can count on the upstream port being 15W. if its 7.5W do you do 4.5+2.5W and 3x 2.5W?

also, I've found that no one obeys the current limit for inrush so now your downstream ports have to allow 7.5+W until they enumerate and you can lower the current limit.

additionally, people are complaining about not being able to tell cables apart. can they tell the power requirements and calculate how much power a combination of devices requires?

Those are only for dumb power supplies using resistors to signal max amount. Negotiated power is very granular.

> additionally, people are complaining about not being able to tell cables apart. can they tell the power requirements and calculate how much power a combination of devices requires?

If they don't know device power levels they can just learn what can simultaneously go on a single port when they try, like with USB 2.

The macbook is using thunderbolt, not pure usb-c.

Note that these terms are not strictly comparable. USB-C is just a connector specification. There are many protocols that utilize USB-C: USB 3.2, USB4 and Thunderbolt being some of them.

This is also a good point. Even I use the terms interchangeably when I shouldn't, and I should know better.