The USB-IF is a group consisting of implementers (IF = Implementers Forum) and obviously it's more profitable for them if they can put "USB 3.2 support" on the box, but keep using the same hardware (newer and more capable => more expensive => lower profit). So in a perverse way - the USB-IF actually has a financial incentive to keep making more confusing standards, because consumer confusion can be exploited for higher profitability.

This is why it's baffling to me that the EU wants to hand this particular forum a legal monopoly on the connector and protocol standards we all have to use in our devices, and that people actually think that's a super good idea that will work out well.

At best they're an incredibly logjammed body, the only reason Lightning exists is because USB-IF couldn't settle on a replacement for USB Micro-B and after years of debate and still no progress Apple finally just went around them (which lit a fire under them to pass USB-C finally). Kinda similar to the way VESA waffled on the Adaptive Sync draft standard for years and years until NVIDIA just finally went around them and implemented their own VRR sync standard, which finally gave the other members the incentive to shit and get off the pot.

Even still, the only thing they could agree on was a "kitchen sink" standard that's ridiculously cumbersome and expensive and complicated - USB-C cables require hand-termination and will simply always be more expensive than an equivalent machine-assembled lightning or micro-B cable [0], and most cables (and for that matter, most devices/connectors/etc) don't support the functional capabilities promised by the USB-C advocates. One cable doesn't do everything, and most devices and cables in fact won't do most of the things that USB-C is capable of delivering. The standard is in fact so complex that most cables get it wrong to a dangerous degree (devices can be destroyed by improperly-implemented cables) as one of Google's engineers discovered [1] when he started systematically testing cables for standards compliance. And the negotiation is more complex and expensive to implement as well, even if you're only doing a low-capability device. There are just fundamental problems with trying to have a standard that covers everything between 1.5 mbit HID devices and 40 gbit PCIe tunneling in the exact same standard and connector and cable (it sounds absurd to even say that).

These standards bodies often don't work very well, and handing them the keys to the kingdom basically guarantees at least some degree of slowed progress and increase in market deadweight. If we mandated that everyone adopt VESA and that HDMI would be illegal to sell in the EU - that would produce similar deadweight loss in the display connection standards as well. Etc etc. IMO while you do want standards - you want at least two standards bodies so that you don't end up in the USB-IF situation where one of them has a legal monopoly.

(not that that's a panacea - by the way - Apple also is advertising HDMI 2.1 and yet they only support 4K60 [2], they are another one of the companies who took advantage of the HDMI Consortium's new standards branding where they do the same thing as USB and HDMI 2.1 can actually be a rubberstamp reapproval of HDMI 2.0b hardware. [3])

I think a lot of people get really wrapped up in the whole "android vs apple" thing and don't really think about what exactly they're doing, they're just happy "their side" won. But in the long term it's going to be far more difficult to actually get improvements passed, because it's legally impossible to produce innovative products that exist outside USB-IF standards if you want to sell in the EU, and USB-IF just doesn't work at all.

[0]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y1Tmtd51clI

[1] https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2016/02/google-engineer-find...

[2] https://www.apple.com/apple-tv-4k/specs/ (they actually seem to have rolled back the "HDMI 2.1" advertising on a lot of devices but they missed a few! There is, technically, a footnote however.)

[3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qo9Y7AMPn00