> USB 3.1 will continue to lag Intel’s high-speed standard (Thunderbolt), but as bandwidth rises this gap becomes increasingly academic.

This may be true of bandwidth, but to the best of my knowledge Thunderbolt is vastly superior in terms of latency. I've heard Thunderbolt likened to pluggable PCI-Express, which is to say that it's both low latency and high bandwidth. USB may be closing the bandwidth gap, but without reworking the way USB is integrated into most motherboards it's going to continue to have latency that isn't well suited to certain tasks.

This isn't an issue if devices continue to ship with Thunderbolt in addition to USB-c, but the new MacBook comes with a single USB-c connector and nothing else.

This is going to put companies like Dell in an awkward position. For the longest time people have been asking them to produce several universal PSUs, but instead at least in the consumer space they keep producing a new incompatible brick every year or so, now sometimes shipping with chips in them to assure nobody can make generic/compatible ones.

So if USB-C laptop charging becomes popular, what will Dell do? Conform and lose the golden egg which is PSU sales, or keep doing what they're doing and let their competition gain ground?

PS - Yes, Dell already somewhat produces a "universal" PSU for their business grade laptops. As does Lenovo with their Thinkpad line(s). However in the consumer space few if anybody does.

Yahoo: https://www.yahoo.com/tech/the-upcoming-usb-c-cable-is-about...