Ahh so we can all have nonsense security features built in so vendors can raise the cost of a power/sync cable to a ridiculous level?
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Upcoming Reversible USB Cable Depicted in New Renderings
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Ahh so we can all have nonsense security features built in so vendors can raise the cost of a power/sync cable to a ridiculous level?
Once again it's a case of Apple leading and everyone else racing to try and keep up with the innovation in Cupertino. Everyone is ripping Apple's ideas off these days. 
Just pointing out that Apple itself has called it USB2. Can't really blame users for calling it that.
This "reversible cable" handles the loss of the peer-to-peer paradigm that has existed in RS-232 "null modem" configuration when USB first launched.
In the very early days of the USB standard, I was told there was actually a spec where there was no distinguishing between a "device" and a "host" but just a "port." The concept of a desktop USB port powering devices to cheapen the cost of desktop peripherals is when the trouble started.
Handspring was one of the first companies to have USB on a mobile device running third party apps. Before that, you had an RS-232 connector to a PC. The USB connection on the Handspring Visor was designed as USB Device to allow sync'ing data to a desktop.
But guess what? You couldn't connect mobile peripherals to the Handspring Visor as you did with previous RS-232 Palm device since it could not drive a peripheral. *facepalm* This broadsided most of the fledgling mobile peripheral industry.
With mobile devices eclipsing PCs in the market, the peer-to-peer is coming back. Thank God!
In the very early days of the USB standard, I was told there was actually a spec where there was no distinguishing between a "device" and a "host" but just a "port." The concept of a desktop USB port powering devices to cheapen the cost of desktop peripherals is when the trouble started.
Handspring was one of the first companies to have USB on a mobile device running third party apps. Before that, you had an RS-232 connector to a PC. The USB connection on the Handspring Visor was designed as USB Device to allow sync'ing data to a desktop.
But guess what? You couldn't connect mobile peripherals to the Handspring Visor as you did with previous RS-232 Palm device since it could not drive a peripheral. *facepalm* This broadsided most of the fledgling mobile peripheral industry.
With mobile devices eclipsing PCs in the market, the peer-to-peer is coming back. Thank God!
I have been hearing that same expression since mid 90's... forget about anything "universal" in tech world, it is not going to happen.
Oh, I get it, I just think we're optimizing the wrong side of this.
I have a Garmin GPS unit for my bike that STILL uses a mini-USB cable/jack for charging and data transfers, which is pretty much what they've standardized over the years on many (most?) of their devices.
When the mini-USB connector inevitably fails, the part that will fail and need to be replaced is the jack inside the unit, and many times these tend to be direct soldered to circuit boards, so repairs wind up being impractical and the whole unit has to be replaced.
To me, that looks to be a similar design for this new USB 3.1 connector. What will eventually fail will be the jack inside the (expensive) device, in order to make the (inexpensive) cable somewhat more reliable.