Hardware

Given that USB isn't bidirectional, having separate A and B connectors was actually a good thing, which USB-C has now gone and screwed up. Stupido example: let's say you charge up your phone using a USB-C wall plug adapter. We'll call the wall plug adapter (the device supplying power) the "charger" (this is normal), and we'll call the phone (the device receiving power) as the "chargee", ok?

Now instead of wall plug you have a USB power bank. So the power bank is the charger and the phone is the chargee. Eventually the power bank goes empty and you have to recharge it from a wall plug. So now the power bank is the chargee. Still not too bad.

But what happens when you try to charge one power bank from another power bank? Both use USB-C so which one is the charger and which is the chargee? Answer: the protocol says when you plug the two together, they are supposed to decide at random! A bunch of code in the chip and then you look at the LEDs to see which way the power is flowing. If it's not what you wanted, unplug and re-plug until it's right.

Even funnier, many phones now have charger capability, so you can recharge phone B from phone A and vice versa. Same confusion. Best of all is when your phone is down to say 30% charge, so you plug it into a power bank. Except oops, it didn't occur to you that the phone can end up charging the power bank instead of the other way around. Brilliant.

Someday maybe the USB committee will make up its mind about something. Meanwhile "universal" has meant "chaos everywhere", lol.