this post was submitted on 09 Aug 2023
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Just about everything except truly basement-tier China tech sitting in warehouses has C now so you'll soon be glad to have the ports.
USB C is a form factor (pretty little reversible oval cable). Thunderbolt is a protocol and yes it uses USB C for the form factor. Other protocols on USB C cabling include 2.0 (ancient speed, used for charging only these days), 3.1 (old speed) 3.2 (slightly old but also not, it's weird, and most common nowadays), DisplayPort (lovely modern video standard), and USB4 (which is newest and fast, but not quite as fast as TB). Decent rule of thumb is USB4 will always be one step behind Thunderbolt in speed (currently ~80gbps vs 40gbps in USB4). The cable will work at the fastest speed permitted by both devices. If they both have TB, then TB speed and power. If only one is TB, it'll go at USB speed over yes the same cable because...
Lastly, any proper spec cable will negotiate the best, safest power transfer between chargers and devices. So just don't buy complete junk, read a couple reviews, you'll almost certainly be fine.
And for uploading the firmware into nearly every small device you have that has a microcontroller with some flash memory on it. They still use TTL serial, so a USB 2.0 to TTL serial adapter is often used. It's also still widely in use for, again, programming of things like commercial/industrial fire/burglar alarm panels.
Often, things we consider "old" in the consumer space go on to live for decades just fine in the industrial/commercial space.
I don't entirely agree with you. It's still very standard for wired mouse and keyboard to use USB A. USB A isn't going anywhere for a while on desktops. I think you're right about laptops though, it's a much better experience