Comment by stouset
2 hours ago
> There shouldn't even need to be a label. A USB-C cable should be a USB-C cable should be a USB-C cable.
Then USB is forever frozen in time, unless we start using new connectors.
This was the tradeoff we got when standardizing on one connector. The protocol versions change (USB, USB-PD, Thunderbolt), the cables that go between each connector change based on the needs of the spec they supports. But the connectors stay the same.
In my opinion, this was a poor tradeoff and now we’re living in the hell we asked for.
If you want every cable to support the latest and greatest of whatever exists as of right now, you can do that. By all means, buy Apple’s USB-C Thunderbolt 5 cables. They’ll run you $70 apiece but you’ll be buying a cable that makes no compromises.
My personal approach is to just use whatever cable came with the device for anything for which that’s convenient and plausible. For mobile devices with relatively limited charging speeds over USB-PD and for which portability and durability are typically important, I buy the latest Apple woven cables. For high-bandwidth devices I spend the big bucks on the Apple Thunderbolt 5 cables. I discard any cables of unknown provenance.
> just use whatever cable came with the device
the problem comes when the device and cable get separated, and the cable is "helpfully" organized into the bin with the rest of the USB-c cables.