This wouldn't be necessary if Big USB had better versioning numbers to begin with. They're right that customers shouldn't see "USB4 Gen whatever x LOL", but it shouldn't be a name underneath, either.
The problem is that there are too many "axes" to encode and simple version numbers would have never worked to encode that all: protocol version, port version, top-rated speed, top-rated power draw, optional features, etc. Not every device needs 80 Gbps and 200 Watts, and if every USB "4" cable had to support that minimum it would greatly increase costs per length to support a tiny fraction of devices. It would drastically simplify things when you go looking for a USB cable for a device, but the cost market of USB cables would look a lot more like, say, HDMI cables: just about only short cables and quite a bit of expense to them.
This new branding initiative may be on the right track, encoding the two axes most obvious to end users of cables: speed and charging strength. (If cable makers move to the new branding. They don't have to. That's the real confusion that USB should fix but can't. Branding is a suggestion, not a requirement.)
The problem is that techs push for branding to be things like a spec semantic version, but specs often just define options such that vendors would implement them in an interoperable way - while profiles are what define and test interoperability against mandatory feature sets.
Spec lines like USB 3.x and HDMI 2.x are meant to be interoperable sets of ever-increasing options, not an upward climb of mandatory minimum capabilities.
Vendors who didn't use SuperSpeed nomenclature before might have been doing so because it was clunky, but also might have been doing so because they didn't want to go through the effort of being certified against a profile (and in some cases, had nonconforming products)
This is simpler naming, but it remains to be seen whether implementors will suddenly care about certification. Those motherboards with the "USB 3.2 2x2 USB-A" red ports on the back are AFAIK un-certifiable and even non-conformant. No amount of marketing push for simpler names is going to help if vendors feel they get more value from just making stuff up.
Names are fine, the problem is if you call something superspeed what are you going to call next years speed? Hyper speed? Ultraspeed? Turbospeed? You rather quickly run out, and that’s if it doesn’t start sounding ridiculously hyperbolic before that. And of course superspeed is super slow by todays standards.
So you have to either use marketing names that don’t mean anything by themselves, or numbers that naturally increase.
Well, USB-IF made a mistake with USB High Speed, Super Speed (+), Full Speed.
Since 3.2 it was pretty simple:
- SuperSpeed USB 5Gbps
- SuperSpeed USB 10Gbps
- and so on.
However, to use, those vendors must send devices for testing and compliance. Many just don't do certification because they don't want, and some don't do that because they're making straight up non-compliant: SuperSpeed USB 20Gbps a.k.a. USB 3.2 Gen 2x2 can only come in USB-C form.
USB 3.2 Gen 1x2 which has the same speed as USB 3.2 Gen 2x1, but it only comes in USB-C unlike USB 3.2 Gen 2x1. When you see a motherboard with USB-A ports and those specs - those are not certified.
Then Super Speed branding tells you nothing about Power Delivery.
Or even USB 1.1, which called the faster of its two modes (12 Mbit, or perhaps more honestly Mbaud, per second) “Full Speed”, at which point anything you name an even-faster one is going to be confusing.
This new branding initiative may be on the right track, encoding the two axes most obvious to end users of cables: speed and charging strength. (If cable makers move to the new branding. They don't have to. That's the real confusion that USB should fix but can't. Branding is a suggestion, not a requirement.)