How long before a unified USB connector is made standard?

[punkncat]

Forgive if a little behind the times here. I am not an Apple guy and up until very recently, and outside of mobile devices, I have not had much use of anything aside from USB A and B for a printer. The last two or three motherboards that I purchased have had various 'C' standard connectors on the back. The latest one has Thunderbolt. I have yet to buy a case with one on the front panel, but I digress.

I went on a reading and video journey yesterday and long story super duper short, part of it was that USB 3/4 and Thunderbolt 3/4 are coming together to unify the standard. Thunderbolt 4 and USB 4 are fully compatible with each other (if I recall all of what I tried to absorb correctly) with differences to video?....anywho, it appears that the USB C connector is to be the item of choice for the future. I do recall one aspect where the speaker in one video stated that the Thunderbolt 4 cable itself is fully backward compatible to all the formats including video delivery.
I looked up one of the cables and they darned sure aren't cheap. All of them have to be certified by Microsoft. They will surely come down as time goes on.

Do you think we will see PC manufacturers move away from the various types of connectors to settle and land on C connections only? Do you think it would be too confusing to the average consumer if the specific ports for the specific devices don't differ in shape as well as (say) color?

On a personal level I see it as being an exciting prospect that perhaps someday soon all we will need for a modern system is a couple of USB C Thunderbolt cables to plug into everything. I am perhaps more than premature in this hope, and will still have to keep a drawer of 'obsolete' cables on hand for years....

Thoughts?

 

[velocityg4]

I think USB C will end up being the standard. But it will take a long time. Think of how long it took VGA mostly die off.

Legacy ports will remain. But they will be emphasized less until they ultimately just show up on only a handful of more specialty motherboards. Think of PS/2 ports.

USB C will likely take over laptops first. As they allow a thinner design. With a port that does it all. Charging, display, USB and Thunderbolt. If rumors are true. Apple going to backtrack on USB C only. That's more a matter of peripheral devices accepting the port before USB A and HDMI can go away.

Thunderbolt is more iffy. There's more uptake now. But it's still premium. Thunderbolt 4 is BS as it didn't update to PCIe 4.0. Being PCIe 3.0 there's little reason to choose it over USB 4 (40 Gbps) as the connection speed is the same. Thunderbolt's just getting an uptick because of demand from premium buyers for Thunderbolt dock, Thunderbolt NVMe and eGPU compatibility. That'll fade if there is no PCIe 4.0 Thunderbolt if these devices start showing up for cheaper with USB 4 and work just as fast.

 

[USAFRet]

It comes and goes.
Long ago, Apple introduced FireWire as an alternate to USB.
It went away.

USB is/was meant to be 'universal'. So far, it has mostly met that demand.
But demands change, bandwidth needs increase.
Sometimes, you can only push an interface so far. So bring in something new.

 

[punkncat]

Legacy ports will remain.

One of the major challenges within my professional field is keeping a machine with an actual serial port on hand. Many of the older fire alarm panels still out in the field have them. The USB to serial adapters are hard to find that work properly with (all) panels the way the native port does.
Unfortunately the laptop I had for this died and the current solution is a Dell SFF, lol.

 

[punkncat]

It comes and goes.
Long ago, Apple introduced FireWire as an alternate to USB.
It went away.

USB is/was meant to be 'universal'. So far, it has mostly met that demand.
But demands change, bandwidth needs increase.
Sometimes, you can only push an interface so far. So bring in something new.

The single factor that I like best about USB C connector is the ease in which it connects. No upside/down, no trying three times before it plugs in.

 

[USAFRet]

The single factor that I like best about USB C connector is the ease in which it connects. No upside/down, no trying three times before it plugs in.

Yup, me too.