Comment by danpalmer
3 years ago
Absolutely.
USB-C appeals to techies, people with an engineering mindset, because it's an elegant solution. It's one connector, with graceful handling of different use-cases from charging, through peripherals, to high-speed high throughput data transfer.
But practically speaking, I've bought several HDMI adapters, had a hard time choosing a mouse that had USB-C a few years ago, have bought a new charger, lost MagSafe on my laptop. This is how most people view it, and it's hard to convince them otherwise, and rightly so!
There are some technical pitfalls of USB-C too. Solvable but still present.
Probably the biggest thing people don't think about is how rare USB-C hubs are. I don't mean the ones that adapt to other ports (if you thought of that first, it illustrates my point), I mean one that takes one USB-C and gives you more. For years after 2016, the chip to make this simply didn't exist. Even now, it's expensive. For this reason, it actually makes sense to use USB-A accessories even if your PCs take -C, cause you can always get more -A ports for cheap. So companies still make -A accessories, and even a lot of -C ones tend to come with an A-to-C cable in the box (and no -C to -C cable!).
Non-tech people tend to understand these things without knowing it. They see new port, they say no.
I have had Android phones where the USB-C port has failed bricking the device (can’t charge). Micro-USB was far worse, but USB-C still fails to often.
Lightning appears to be much more robust (anecdotally watching friends devices, I have had few Apple iDevices). Mechanically and electrically, I like the lightning connector (although I loath proprietary shit generally).
Your android phones can't wirelessly charge?
It's not even an elegant solution.
Having one port profile front for multiple technologies (USB, USB-PD, DisplayPort, Thunderbolt), and multiple versions of those technologies, with the cables being random able/unable to support any particular matrix of them, has been a usability nightmare.
Also on a purely functional level the actually-a-male design of the Lightning plug has made it—in my opinion—a far superior physical plug than the looks-male-but-is-female-in-disguise design of the USB-C plug.