I don't think the port names is what they were referring to.

The actual names for each data transfer level are an absolute mess.

1.x has Low Speed and Full Speed 2.0 added High Speed 3.0 is SuperSpeed (yes no space this time) 3.1 renamed 3.0 to 3.1 Gen 1 and added SuperSpeedPlus 3.2 bumped the 3.1 version numbers again and renamed all the SuperSpeeds to SuperSpeed USB xxGbps And finally they renamed them again removing the SuperSpeed and making them just USB xxGbps

USB-IF are the prime examples of "don't let engineers name things, they can't"

It will always work if you want 500 mA at 5V and if 480 Mbps is sufficient (assuming everything is USB2 compatible nowadays).

But sometimes the extra power or extra data transfer is not an option. For charging a laptop for instance, you typically need 20V, if your charger doesn't support that, you can't charge at all. And then there is Thunderbolt, DisplayPort, Oculink, where the devices that use these features won't work at all in an incompatible port. And I am not aware of device that strictly requires one of the many flavors of USB 3 or 4, but I can imagine a video capture card needing that. Raw video requires a lot of bandwidth.

Users aren't supposed to be (choosing && swapping) CPUs by themselves between these identical sockets(LGA2011 v0 through v3). These are supposed to be bought in trays and kitted in a shop. So reusing same parts for cost saving should not cause issues.

Consumer oriented sockets(LGA115x) has different notches and pin counts to prevent this issue - actually, some of "different" sockets in consumer oriented sockets with "different" chipsets are actually identical, and sometimes you see Chinese bastardized boards that use discarded server-marked chips and pins-fudged hacker builds online that should not be possible according to marketing materials, so there is their own rabbit hole there.

> But it will always work

Not at all. If you want to charge your phone, it might "always work", but if you want to use your monitor with USB hub and pass power to your MacBook, you're gonna have a hard time.

> The worst possible scenario is that the data/power standard supported by the physical connection isn't optimal. But it will always work.

I don't know what "always work" means here but I feel like I've had USB cables that transmit zero data because they're only for power, as well as ones that don't charge the device at all when the device expects more power than it can provide. The only thing I haven't seen is cables that transmit zero data on some devices but nonzero data on others.

> the data/power standard supported by the physical connection isn't optimal

How polite. It can be useless, not "not optimal". Especially since usb-c can burn you on a combination of power and speed, not only speed.

> But it will always work.

I can't find a USB-C PD adapter for a laptop that uses less than 100W. As a result, I can't charge a 65W laptop from a 65W port because the adapter doesn't even work unless the port is at least 100W.

It does not always work.