So are most of the things I'd want to plug into it - and since multiple USB 2 devices plugged into USB 3 hubs still only get to share 480Mbps of bandwidth there would be no benefit using a USB3 hub. Heck, some things, like MIDI, barely even need USB 1. Using USB4/TB would only be an advantage if it meant that things like audio interfaces got their own dedicated USB 2 stream rather than sharing...
...which is something I'd
really have to check out before getting one of the new USB4 hubs: do they actually contain extra PCIe-to-USB controllers, or are they actually just sharing however many USB-over-TB streams the upstream controller provides (2?)
This is what people don't get about why USB 2 & 3 are still hanging around:
RS232 topped out at 20k bps - and by 1998 dialup modems were offering 28k+ and ISDN 128k, while a RS232 hard drive would have been
horrible. Using parallel printer ports as bi-directional interfaces for scanners, zip drives etc - which was SOP on PCs at the time - was also a kludgy, dead-end idea.
USB 1 blew that away with
12Mbps... more than fast enough for the Ethernet, removable drives, scanners etc. of the day. It also replaced proprietary Apple things like ADB.
USB 2 replaced 12Mbps
480Mbps... a
40x increase. good luck if your broadband delivers that in 2021, it's enough for 8+ channels of CD quality audio and
tolerable for attaching a mechanical HD or cheap flash stick.
USB 3 upped that 10x to
5Gbps... fast enough for all but the highest-end SSDs, goodbye Firewire, eSATA etc. Plus, of course, 3.1gen2 runs quite happily over USB type A sockets if you want 10Gbps.
...i.e. each of those upgrades offered an order-of-magnitude speed increase that obliterated existing bottlenecks and opened up brand new applications. And, from USB 1 onwards, offered full backward compatibility with the old connectors.
USB-C... has a reversible plug, and tidies up some of the incompatible protocols for fast device charging. Other than that,
as a successor to USB 3 type A/B, at introduction it was just the same USB 3 protocol repackaged with a new connector.
OK, there's a
bit more to USB-C/Thunderbolt 3/USB4 than that (qv
ad nauseum elsewhere), but for many applications, the only "reward" for getting new cables, adapters etc. is the privilege of being able to keep using your existing devices (or use new devices which are often just the same old USB3 products with a different connector). Unless you're doing something like 8k video editing that needs cutting edge bandwidth for the most expensive "pro" peripherals, USB-C just doesn't offer the sort of end-of-argument advantages that previous upgrades have done. Even Thunderbolt 3 was only a relatively modest improvement over TB2 which had been available for years.
Same goes for peripheral
manufacturers - if your device only needs 1Gbps or less, why limit your market to users with USB-C ports when you can use a cheaper-to-implement USB-A/B/micro port and throw an adapter cable in the box? (Which is what you usually get if you buy from a company used to dealing with non-Apple users who haven't been conditioned to expect to be nickel-and-dimed over a cheap adapter)?
