The single reversible port that does everything is a genuine win. One cable for the laptop, the phone, the headphones, the monitor. We asked for this for years, and we got it.
One shape, many secrets
The catch is that the shape is now the only thing you can trust. Two identical cables can carry wildly different power, data, and video capabilities, and nothing on the outside tells you which. The port won; the certainty did not survive the victory.
So we traded a drawer full of obviously-different connectors for a drawer full of identical ones that behave differently, and a new small anxiety about whether this cable will actually drive that display. Progress, with an asterisk.
We standardised the plug and quietly un-standardised everything behind it.
Worth it, on balance. But the tidy universal future turned out to have fine print, and the fine print is printed on cables too small to read it.