| Universal Serial Bus. With optional universalness. I think Roritharr is right, this is the beginning of the end for the great era of standardization that USB brought. If there was a port and a cable, you pretty much knew it would work for everything the port should do. DisplayPort and HDMI port/cable versioning have been a colossal pain for me. GPU spec lists on shopping sites don't even list what version they support, so you have to constantly cross reference things to manufacturer datasheets. http://i.imgur.com/ffMR5gj.png What's sad is that we had the same sorts of differentiations in the past, like with DVI-I (digital and analog) and DVI-D (digital only) and Dual-link DVI (for big screens). So what did we do? We called them different things and then actually advertised what it was capable of. But apparently saying "DisplayPort 1.2" is too complicated now or something? Maybe there are too many different optional features that may or may not be supported by a GPU or the cable or the display, so they just assume none of them will work? I don't even know. That screenshot isn't an old graphics card either, it's a GTX 970. Not looking forward to USB turning into the same mess. EDIT: This isn't all new, I recall seeing some laptops with strange things like yellow USB ports that were still powered for charging when the computer is sleeping. But that's a minor feature that most people wouldn't even notice. Major capabilities missing from some ports is different, and can get more confusing than "the blue ports are faster but all of them will work". |
USB is already "that mess" depending on what it is you need the port to do. Let me know how that USB-powered device that needs 90W does when you plug it into a port that's only 1.0 capable.