Well actually you can. I think you might be referring to what happens to USB bandwidth when a cable length exceeds 2m and you need an active cable. But why does this universal cable also have to be above 2m? And why can't you have a long cable for the special use case, and then have a shorter cable which can do *absolutely everything*? I really think we're looking for a problem here, a consumer can look up the specs of the cable before they buy it and if they're borrowing a thin cable off someone then its very likely to not be a fully capable cable.
It's sort of funny that in offering all this flexibility the type C port is gathering criticism precisely because it can be used for everything!
My monitor comes with a 1.8m cable that gives up to 85w power, 5k or dual 4k and USB 3.1 speeds as well. But it never leaves the monitor as its the monitor cable, IRL people don't want to use 1 cable for literally everything do they? It'd wear out fast I imagine.
Just because Type C can use one cable doesn't mean we need to reduce it to being *only* able to use one cable. But if you wanted to, you can.
I never said I only want to buy 1 cable and try to use that 1 single cable everywhere. That's a strawman argument. The point is that people can have one cable or a 10 pack of cables that fit but doesn't work depending on what they're trying to do.
They killed the adage of "if it fits it works" by allowing a combination of different standards and protocols all to use the same connector along with a myriad of different cables all with the same connector. You're trying to apologize for it by acting like it's a "feature" of USB-C that there isn't just one cable to cover all of it. Yay, instead of carrying around 5 cables with different ends, now with USB-C I get to carry 5 different cables that all look the same but don't cover identical use cases!!!! Woohoo this is what we all dreamed of, having to label our cables to keep track of what they do!!!!!
I don't understand why you keep trying to insist that one cable can do absolutely everything. It simply isn't true. If you have a laptop with a DisplayPort output and a monitor that uses DisplayPort you cannot use an active TB3 cable. An active TB3 cable will only work with DisplayPort
over Thunderbolt 3. Good luck getting consumers to figure that out. Whatever they just bought is getting returned because it appears to be broken.
Then there is the ****-show of compatibility with various alternate modes:
USB-C Alternate Mode video compatibility vs Thunderbolt 3:
Thunderbolt 3 supports HDMI 2.0
USB 3.1 only supports HDMI 1.4b
DisplayPort:
USB 3.1 supports DP 1.3
Thunderbolt 3 only supports DP version 1.2
I didn't even touch on power delivery either. Does it carry 60W or 100W, or in the case of optical TB3 cables, no power at all?