This is exactly the sort of crap I was afraid of. Particularly this:
It’s worth remembering that even though many of these new USB specifications are rolling out all at once—the Type C connector, USB 3.1 Gen 2, USB Power Delivery, and USB Alternate Mode—support for one doesn’t necessarily imply support for any of the others. There will be USB Type C devices that use USB 2.0 or 3.0 (sorry, 3.1 Gen 1) buses and transfer speeds. There will be Type C ports that don’t support Power Delivery, and Power Delivery ports that aren’t necessarily Type C.
Uggh. I had this vain hope that having the type C port would imply a higher baseline level of functionality. Instead, no. We don't even have the subtle cue of the blue bit of plastic in a USB port that distinguishes USB3 from USB2.
Sigh.
Meanwhile, I was chatting with a Google buddy and he showed me a cable they have, internally, that's a USB-A-to-micro-B cable with an inline button. When you first plug it in, it's "charge only" but you can press the button to make it a data cable. This doesn't seem to be available anywhere online.
Needless to say, when you've got one connector for all things, you want some way of saying "I don't trust your charger but I want power from it." I wonder if these sorts of things will catch on.
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