They're bad because manufacturers want to pass their usb 2.0 gear as "usb 3.0 compliant", which it technically is, and their usb 3.0 gear as "usb 3.2" because 3.2 Gen 1x1 is also 5gbps.
The USB X.X is just the version of the standard and doesn't mean anything for the capabilities of a physical device.
When a new standard comes out it superceeds the old one. Devices are always designed and certified according to the current standard.
There's even some devices charged with USB C that can't be charged with a PD charger and need an A to C cable
Phones with qualcomm chips briefly had their own proprietary fast charging standards that were not a USB standard. You are unlikely to be using those devices in 2024. But is it USB-IF's fault manufacturers tried to create proprietary standards to collect royalties?
Additionally they renamed the USB 3.0 standard which has been established for over a decade to USB 3.1 Gen 1 which is completely unnecessary and just serves to confuse
No they didn't?
The 5Gbps transfer rate introduced in 2008 is called "Superspeed" and it always has been.
USB X.X is not a port or a transfer speed. It's the standard (ie a technical whitepaper). The standard is updated as time marches on and new features are added.
The standard was largely understandable with USB 3.0 generally being blue or at least a color other than black and on decently modern devices USB 2.0 would be black.
This was never a requirement, but it was nice to know which Type-A ports had 8 pins vs 4-pins.
With USB-C indication has just about gone out the window and what used to be a very simple to understand standard has now become nearly impossible to understand without having researched every device and cable you interact with.
For the most part you just plug it in and it works. If you need something specific like an external GPU connection, you can't use your phone charging cable, sure. Is that really that big of a deal?
Sometimes people want to charge their phone in an outlet 10 feet from their airport seat.
Sometimes people want to transmit 8k video.
It's not physically possible to do both tasks with the same cable.
But because USB is a flexible standard, we don't have two incompatible specs to do the same thing. So when you get out of the airport and to your meeting, you can actually plug your phone into the meeting room projector for your business presentation. That's a win.
It has to be optional to remain a "Universal" spec.
If it had more requirements, it would be more cumbersome to implement and device manufacturers would come up with completely different, completely incompatible cables and ports (a la Apple's lightning) that would cause you even more headaches.
People do not want to be limited to 1m long cords or only have thick and stiff Thunderbolt3 cords with 20 different conductors for a wired mouse.
Minimum specs like you are proposing just make the standard less useful and would lead to more competing specs that aren't compatible at all (a la lightning cables).
To be a truly "universal" spec, flexibility is king.
Additionally, USB 3.0, 3.1 and 3.2 labels provide no information on the speed
Correct.
USB X.X is the name of the technical whitepaper that describes the standard.
For a long time, USB had three transfer rates. The first legacy speed (slowest) was hardly ever used. The Second was called "Full Speed" and the fastest was called "Hi-speed". Because people could not remember which if these two were faster, they referred to the whitepapers in which they were introduced.
When later versions of USB were introduced people have tried to continue this mental "shortcut" and have caused themselves nothing but confusion.
USB in 1996: lets let you plug any device into the back of your computer.
USB in 2024: phones, tablets laptops are going to charge at crazy voltages and we're going to show you 8k video all over the same port and you can insert it in both directions and we're still going to connect any device to any device.
Why are people so interested in defining themselves along sexual identity and orientation in relatively recent western culture?
Why now? Why is it so different from most of human existence?
Because we are no longer facing famine. The Green Revolution has made our relationship with food so secure we no longer define ourselves in relation to it.
Throughout most of history people are farmers or ranchers or shepherds or bakers or butchers or millers.
So, we climb the Biological hierarchy of needs looking for our next characteristic that needs fulfillment.
The USB X.X is just the version of the standard and doesn't mean anything for the capabilities of a physical device.
When a new standard comes out it superceeds the old one. Devices are always designed and certified according to the current standard.
Soooo...What are you talking about?