Who cares what they (USB standards committee) want. It should be what's best for the consumer and society in general, not some committee looking only to promote its own interests. All they really had to do was create a dual-port with two different shapes on it that interlock. In other words, a USB port with an additional small vertical component that is only used for Thunderbolt devices. This way they can put multiple ports on a laptop and let the user decide what to use them for and yet computers with only one or the other will still fit their respective devices.
But putting ThunderStruck on a port that is not used hardly anywhere in the known Universe and then attaching it to video (worse than useless on a Mac Pro, for example) compounds the mistake many times over. Not only does this potentially choke Thunderbolt's potential because it has to carry video that it doesn't need to carry when a dedicated video port would do, but needlessly adds a video standard that is then going to be missing or a hassle and a half on any machine with video cards (like the Mac Pro) which would then either wipe out your Thunderbolt connections if you bought a different video card without Thunderbolt on it or leave you with a non-standard port that doesn't carry video but should be carrying it (thus being useless with monitor hubs, etc.) This is what happens when you start mixing bandwidth between unrelated devices.
Worse even yet is what happens when you only have ONE Thunderbolt port that is ALSO your video output port. Your monitor has to be the last device (unless it has its own hub) and so any devices you might need to hot connect or remove means unplugging your monitor back and forth with the other devices in-between since someone thought that daisy-chaining was a GREAT idea....
Display port monitors that aren't thunderbolt will definitely have to be the last in the chain since they can't pass it at all period even if they have 2nd display port to pass just straight video. The standards were no designed together and then just arbitrarily linked by Apple. Bad move.
Let's face it. As soon as Apple gets USB 3.0 with Ivy Bridge, it's game over for Thunderbolt except as a high-end device (just like with Firewire). Incompatible ports + MDP ports that almost no one else uses + no reasonable priced hubs + no reasonable priced devices = FAIL. USB 3.0 is 100% backwards compatible with USB 2.x and 1.x and so you don't need any other ports on a mobile device. Plug in a hub and you're golden with as many ports as you need or can be sustained for available bandwidth. USB 3.0 can replace USB 2.x and 1.x and so it's a no-brainer low cost addition to virtually ALL computers in the near future while Thunderbolt is something that no one really needs and has no real device support beyond a few high-end things like mega-fast raid arrays and costs an arm and a lag for all existing hubs (tied to single monitor choices only from Apple). Little support = Fail no matter how good the technology (witness FW800 in its day; it was vastly superior to USB2.x, but it got little support by comparison because it wasn't needed by most people and devices supporting it cost $100-200 more than the comparable USB2.0 or E-Sata versions due to the need for an expensive on-board controller.
