Because being able to differentiate uniquely different offerings by different designations is only of value to marketers?
There are differences that warranted the incrementing of the numbering - mainly the vastly superior USB-C connector over the gawd awful USB-A, Micro, Mini and that other one that I can never remember the name of.
> Because being able to differentiate uniquely different offerings by different designations is only of value to marketers?
What are you talking about? The whole point we're discussing here is that thanks to marketers we have the opposite of that where the exact same product has had three different marketing versions associated with it over the last few years without any actual difference.
USB naming/numbering was perfectly reasonable up to 3.0. Higher speed revisions got a new number and lower speed revisions kept their old one.
Then with 3.1 this all changed. Suddenly the same port that was a USB 3.0 port yesterday is now a USB 3.1 Gen1 port and the new 10 gigabit speed is USB 3.1 Gen2.
Then 3.2 comes along and suddenly those ports are now 3.2 Gen1 and 3.2 Gen2, with the new additions of 3.2 Gen1x2 and 3.2 Gen2x2 modes.
What would have been wrong with continuing the same way they had already been doing things and just calling the SuperSpeed+ mode "USB 3.1" while leaving the old ports referred to as USB 3.0, then when dual lane came around that is "USB 3.2"? It's straightforward, easy to understand, and doesn't have any chance of confusing someone in to thinking "well this thing has USB 3.1 Gen1 while this other one only has USB 3.0, I guess the first one's better".
> There are differences that warranted the incrementing of the numbering - mainly the vastly superior USB-C connector over the gawd awful USB-A, Micro, Mini and that other one that I can never remember the name of.
The type C connector is independent of the versioned standards. The USB 3.1 spec was released in July 2013 while the Type C connector spec didn't come out until August 2014. USB 3.1's 10gbit SuperSpeed+ mode is allowed and supported on the same USB 3.x Type A and Micro-B connectors as USB 3.0 SuperSpeed uses. USB 3.2's dual link mode of course requires a Type C connector at both ends.
USB 4 actually requires a Type C connector, while it supports single lane operation for setup and fallback it requires all devices support dual lane. The 10 gigabit mode also uses different encoding than SuperSpeed+ so it's not just another rename.
There are differences that warranted the incrementing of the numbering - mainly the vastly superior USB-C connector over the gawd awful USB-A, Micro, Mini and that other one that I can never remember the name of.