This only goes part way to solving the problem. Its good that all the ports are required to support display and power as well as connectivity, but how many screens at what resolutions and is every port capable of powering the laptop fully? These things matter in the real world. What infuriates me most is that so many manufacturers don’t actually list precisely what a port is capable of, making you guess if a displayport dongle dependent on DP pass through will work or not on the port that is remaining. So many have issues where you can’t actually run the laptop at full power from a thunderbolt dock into their thunderbolt port because they don’t support being fully powered that way.

Then there is the enormous gulf in performance between USB 3.1, 2x2 and USB 4.

The USB standards board made this mess and made too much of the ports features optional and now its a giant mess. We can start by requiring not that the ports meet a minimum requirement, but that they fully and completely specify what the actual standards are that the ports support in the specifications and require they use the existing logos next to the ports.

Why the fuck does software have arbitrary hardware requirements.

Why does Microsoft feel like they are the right guys to deal with this problem? Wait don’t answer that, i have some ideas.

This could be solved if we simply labeled or colored ports consistently… or at the very least provide accurate information on what ports you will have on the store page.

I feel like this is part of a bigger trend. First general information is destroyed by new naming schemes. Make products as confusing as they can on purpose so you no longer become able to judge the value of a product.

And now they come in saying, If its paired with our product your are guaranteed a good version of the confusing product. Which you will pay twice the premium for now.

That seems like a good way to increase the cost of the motherboard if it has more than a couple USB C ports. That’s a lot of signals to route to every port. I just want the ports to be appropriately marked so I know what functions they support.