This is sort of like a “for nerds by nerds” solution. Nobody is going to remember this coding system.

I’d rather just see the specs written down on the cable or on the connector in words if it’s going to be marked.

Or, your device could just alert you to a sub-optimal situation in software.

Aside from that, most of the distinctions aren’t actually important to consumers. If you need 3.1 Gen 2 instead of Gen 1 you’re probably the type of person to already know that and plan accordingly.

Your typical consumer knows that the cable that comes with their computer or phone charges the system. They probably never use the cable for anything else. At most they’ll connect an HDMI display with an adapter.

They aren’t generally impacted if they accidentally don’t get the highest possible transfer speed - heck, they probably don’t use non-cloud storage in the first place.

They also don’t really care about getting the fastest charging possible. If you want evidence for that hypothesis, just check out the vast army of 5W iPhone power bricks and 30W MacBook Air chargers that are out in the wild.

My computer has multiple USB-C ports. It would be nice if I could plug both ends into two of these ports and have an app report back to me all of the capabilities of that cable. That's not as good as being able to know just by looking at the cable but it would at least give me a definitive option instead of playing the Swap-the-Cable game until things work (assuming the cable is the issue, which it might not be). A handheld device would be even better.

i mean, the real solution is to only buy good, compliant, backwards compatible cables and largely standardize with the feature set your most demanding high-use device requires, but that could put you at $30+ USD or more per cable.

I tend to buy Anker cables and color code them by capabilities. though to be honest, i didn't even realize USB C 3.2 had two generations-- i was pretty much just breaking it down by: white/silver 100W PD, red for 18W, and black for unknown came-with-a-thing.

btw, its about to get better and worse https://www.theverge.com/circuitbreaker/2021/5/25/22453936/u...

I thought some cables support HDMI or DisplayPort alt modes and some don’t.

As a colorblind person I just wished we as a society moved past using color for markings on anything.

Oh, you mean like resistor codes?

Maybe one stripe on the cable for each connector?

Then you have colored and dashed or dotted lines for each stripe, depending on what that connector can do or be used for?

Are we ready to go plaid yet?

If the bands were much smaller and on the cable instead of the connector, I think it could work without standing out so obnoxiously.