I probably misused the "across the spectrum" idiom. What I meant is that it would make developers much happier than USB-C and it would make consumers much happier than USB 3. My idea was that it's a more wholesome situation than content consumer and frustrated developer.
As a consumer I want one cable to do all of it. Sure, like anything else, it will be difficult and slow progress to get there. As developer you sould see it as challenge.
It's good that you know your ideal user-experience (developers are aware of it too), but the trade-offs will depend on what's happening on the developer's end, so dismissing developer difficulties is not conducive to a good consumer experience.
Developer difficulty is a symptom of a more systemic problem, and it will usually affect the end-user through: higher-cost, lower-reliability, accumulation of technical debt, and/or resource-inefficiency.
Not dismissing, I understand it is a hard problem. I'm simply saying that is the developer job to solve the issue.
Similar thing happen in web development, there are tons of device, screen size, javascript framework, browser, os, all come with its own quirks. Is it suck ? Yes it is but it is my job as as a competent developer to manage all those complexity and solve the issue. From the user prescriptive, all they need to know is the site is working with whatever device they use, that is the goal.
Yes, but because of "the suck" of web it's in some ways in a dismal state and that affects users. We can have only a small number of browsers that are well maintained; browsing is resource-intensive; web is extremely inaccessible to people with disabilities; web is notorious for security problems; fingerprinting can be seen as a side-effect of bad design; web requires a lot of man-hours to develop and maintain, like you mentioned; etc. The list seems endless.
Sure you I wish that the state is in whatever it is that I prefer but thats unrealistic. As developer you have to be ready with whatever state you are in.
Sure, If there are only small number of browser or all of my user is not disabled, I would prefer that and my job will be easier but that is not realistic.
I have to be ready with whatever situation I've been dealt with. As developer my job is to solve problem and manage complexity. As a developer dealing with complex and hard problem is given.
In the end is the developer job to handle those issue so that in the perspective of the user, everything just works.
I can sympathize with wanting to solve as many problems as possible and as well as possible and to provide a great user experience; however, our ability as devs is necessarily limited and that should be accounted for. Both the developer and the user are in this together.
