I think these are actually the most minor problems with the USB-C vision. The VAST majority of consumers will never encounter a thunderbolt device, and the ones that do can be expected to understand the cable difference.
What is far more of an issue for the standard is the established network effect. USB-A has become so commonplace that its built into our furniture, and micro-USB is a legally defined requirement for device charging in some areas. These foundational forces will prove to be a massive deterrent to USB-C uptake, and far more of a risk to the vision than multiple cable types that are clearly labeled!
But, the bright side of this I think is Apple's adoption of the Qi charging standard. Its clear that an evolutional jump to wireless charging will entail new technology, so I see Qi taking up the "one way to charge everything" vision.
I agree, the USB-A form factor is by far the most widely used peripheral connector in the history of computers. The shift from USB-A to USB-C is without precedent.
Practically every mouse, keyboard, printer, camera, charger, and external drive made in the last 20 years has used USB-A. Practically every car in the last 10 years has USB-A. Every hotel room, every airplane, every DC power converter. There are still millions (billions?) of devices shipped every year with USB-A.
Luckily space exists for devices using USB-A and devices using USB-C, and making cables with A at one end and C at the other is trivial enough that many cables exist like this.
Two compatible cable standard is easy to handle. The hard part comes when you have USB-A, USB-C, Lightning, Micro-USB, and Mini-USB all competing. Trying to keep enough of each type of cable on hand gets to be pricy.
Mini-USB is dead, and micro-USB/USB-A are opposite ends of the cable - they don't get used for the same thing. I'm guessing Lightning must be some weird one-manufacturer proprietary thing, in which case they deserve to be punished for their antisocialness.
So you really don't need that many cables. C-to-C, C-to-mini, and A-to-C will do you.
Contra sibling comments, it technically isn't a legal requirement. It's entirely voluntary, a memorandum of understanding between manufacturers, facilitated by the EU.
Obviously 'voluntary' here deserves some scare quotes since the EU had made it very clear that it was willing to swing its sledgehammer and formally regulate if the manufacturers couldn't agree on a standard amongst themselves. Which would have been less good for everyone (including the EU), e.g. since formal legal regulations are a lot harder to change with the times, So they were pretty incentivized to work something out, and happily they did.
In the EU. And it put the insanity of having many incompatible chargers to an end up to the point when some mobile phone producers did not include a charger with the phone they sold because they rightly assumed one available from the previous phone.
One really good EU standardization effort which actually worked except for Apple.
There were an exception clause specifically for the likes of Apple. As long as the proprietary plug was removable from the charger (either by having the other end plug into an A socket on the charger, or by being a proprietary-to-micro converter) the EU would accept it.
The main point was to facilitate that chargers could be reused, rather than fill up drawers and landfills.
Apple can still do so because their charger cable can be detached and has an A plug on the charger itself.
Thus the charger can be reused on a different device with a simple change of cable (a different story is that Apple has their own way of signaling max As to the device).
They ship with a lightningstrike/thunderport/whatever-was-that-name to usb cable though which can be used to charge it with pretty much any USB charger out there.
Not perfect by far, but better than it used to be before EU started to tell phone manufacturers to wisen up.
It’s easy to forget how crazy bad things used to be before the EU mandated a standardization.
From what I have read it’s in Europe and if the device doesn’t include a micro-USB port it must have a dongle / adapter included at no extra charge, which is what I believe Apple does.
What is far more of an issue for the standard is the established network effect. USB-A has become so commonplace that its built into our furniture, and micro-USB is a legally defined requirement for device charging in some areas. These foundational forces will prove to be a massive deterrent to USB-C uptake, and far more of a risk to the vision than multiple cable types that are clearly labeled!
But, the bright side of this I think is Apple's adoption of the Qi charging standard. Its clear that an evolutional jump to wireless charging will entail new technology, so I see Qi taking up the "one way to charge everything" vision.