To elaborate: Why must a USB cable look different from an HDMI cable? Why must we have B-type and C-type chargers? Why use circular audio jacks when it can be “USB’ed” instead? and so on
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“Universal” cables end up being mediocre at everything
The best cable option for short ranges would be DisplayPort as it does power transfer and has crazy bandwidth so now all your devices need to support a mini-DP connector
Your headphones are now much larger to support the mini-DP plug.
Your keyboard is now much more expensive because DP signaling is more hardware intensive
Your motherboard is now much more expensive because every port needs full bidirectional DP support just in case
Nothing is compact, nothing is cheap, and everything is supporting more features than it needs.
We have different cables and sockets for different applications because they’re better at those applications. USB is cheap, moderate length, and fairly fast. HDMI and DisplayPort are expensive, ludicrously fast, and only used in applications that require it. Ethernet requires special hardware but is fast and can cover insane distances compared to the rest.
One design to rule them all drags everything down with it
18 competing standards each excel at their specific job
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