Actually Apple is definitely big enough to force change—they've done it multiple times in the past. Apple helped push the original USB standard into common use with the original iMac. Obviously it would have happened eventually, but the iMac made the transition occur much faster than it would have otherwise.
The problem with the USB-C standard is that USB-A now transcends far beyond the personal computer industry. It's now a power adapter standard for mobile phones and all sorts of gizmos, gadgets and accessories for the home and car. USB-A isn't going anywhere for a long time.
> Apple helped push the original USB standard into common use with the original iMac.
I don't think that's true. USB became ubiquitous because literally every PC included it after 1998. Yes, it might have helped that USB also worked with Macs, unlike previous connectors.
The USB port did start appearing on some PCs before the iMac—largely because Intel put it in its chipsets—but it was practically abandonware with precious few peripherals prior to the iMac. When the flood of peripherals did arrive, many of them were styled with translucent cables and casings to match the iMac, even when sold for Windows PCs.
> Actually Apple is definitely big enough to force change—they've done it multiple times in the past.
In many cases it's arguable whether Apple forced a change or it was a case of Apple "skating where the puck is going" and doing something that was inevitably going to happen given time.
I conceded as much in the paragraph you quoted from. What Apple did is force the market to move faster that it would have otherwise.[0]
Similarly, if Tesla never existed the electric car would still have been an inevitability. Perhaps it would have taken another decade to emerge. Perhaps two decades. But it would have eventually. On electric propulsion, Tesla is most definitely just "skating where the puck is going."
In both cases—Tesla and Apple—they're not just skating where the puck is going, they're also in control of the puck, even if only a little bit.
[0] And thinking about it further, I shouldn't have conceded the assumption that USB's dominance was inevitable. It seems that way in hindsight but was it really? It could have fizzled like Firewire. It is entirely possible that new incremental standards—perhaps an ultra-fast nine pin serial port protocol—could have filled the gap before another connector emerged to dominate.
I'd argue it is both. Apple isn't going to convince an industry to move to a closed standard, however they may accelerate the move to new open standards. For instance, moving away from floppy disks to compact disk media, and moving from serial/parallel/PS2 ports to USB.
Often these technologies are stuck until there is a first big adopter. Now Google, Apple Macs, and most of Android is behind USB-C for instance, there will be a lot more accessories that use it. Right now IMHO it is being held back mostly by cost - micro-usb and an A to micro-B cable are still the cheapest parts.
If you want to use usb 3.1 gen 2 speeds, you pretty much have to use Type C. The only other alternative is a full usb type a connector or the awkward micro b connector (which is rate).
I'm not sure. As more devices and peripherals have gained USB-C, lots of horror stories of chargers frying devices and other catastrophic failures have shown up. This isn't my wheelhouse, but just from the reading I've done, it sounds like USB-C is a difficult-to-implement standard and that peripheral makers are more interested in getting something out the door quickly and cheaply. With the amount of power that USB-C can drive, this is risky.
If the end result is that you can't tell if plugging into your friend's charger is going to blow up your phone (or video game console), I think USB-C is going to fall apart.
Cheap chargers and cables that aren't compliant are not unique to USB-C, and why we have things like UL. There are a lot of people using quite frankly dangerous USB-A chargers for their cell phones because they found them obnoxiously cheap.
Apple isn’t quite big enough to force an industry change in personal computers.