They made a bold move of removing all USB-A ports with a single USB-C port in their new Macbook redesign.

The USB-C port has been around for a while now, yet was popularized recently in 2015 by Apple. It’s the port we are all used to in our everyday lives. It’s been an industry standard for decades in computers and other devices. It’s the simple non-reversible rectangular port which we use to plug in everything from mice to speakers. Type-A is the port we are all familiar with. To make things simpler for us and the readers, we’ll be concerning ourselves with just the two important ones for PCs. Of course, these can be further broken down into even more ports such as micro-A or micro-B (typically used in phones). There are tonnes of different USB form factors out there. Sadly, Thunderbolt 3 is still a rarity and taking its time to come to the mainstream market. You can transfer a full 4k movie in under a minute. Even in simple transferring of data, it’s impressive. What can you do with that blazing speed? You can use it to connect an external graphics card, a 4k display and even charge your laptop. Thunderbolt 3 is four times faster than USB 3.1 Gen2 maxing out at a whopping 40 gigabits/s (5GB/s or 5000MB/s). It’s aptly called the one port to connect them all.

Thunderbolt 3 is a protocol, not a port so it’s often seen that a USB-C port with Gen2 support also works with Thunderbolt 3. There are obviously limitations to this with wattage alongside with power delivery. Now, each of these protocols has bi-directional power delivery meaning any of them can be used to charge a laptop or power a display. It can utilize USB 3.1 Gen1 and Gen2 alongside thunderbolt 3. Just another topic we want to quickly get out of the way is Thunderbolt 3.

Usb 2 vs usb 3 cable speed comparison