That's just silly. Intel is the company that made USB and Thunderbolt the hot messes that exist right now. Microsoft, up till now has only made matters worse. A friend was hired to bring MS into compliance with standards twenty years ago—retired fifteen years later declaring that the job was not just impossible; it was useless. He had written what became NT in college and led the team that wrote the first search engine, Alta Vista, when he wondered how big the internet was.

I've been a member of the USB IF for many years now.

Part of the mess is that USB 3 is not backward compatible with 2/1.1 at all — cables and ports must be built to support both. Many USB 3/3.1/3.2 over USB-C cables cannot support USB 2/1.1. This causes problems with the many USB 2 interfaces out there as well as office printers. Yamaha and other companies recommend buying USB-C Printer Cables for their keyboards and interfaces to ensure connectivity—these support USB 2/1.1 only.

Apple's implementation of USB 4 (Thunderbolt 4 & 3) and 4.2 (Thunderbolt 5, 4 & 3) are backward compatible to USB 1.1. You will need cable adapters to support Thunderbolt 2, 1, USB 2/1.1 but USB 4/4.2 pipe supports everything. Although USB 4 & 4.2 cables work with Thunderbolt devices, they are not Intel certified so they do not have the incompatibility issues that Intel has imposed on certified hardware.

Windows is still using Intel certification for Thunderbolt. Although the TB spec calls for backward compatibility, with TB4, Intel broke that and TB5 hasn't fixed it. Only if Microsoft can get Intel to fix the hardware issue will that article become true someday. It won't fix the incompatibility in the hardware that exists now.

So, if you need a USB-C cable, one that supports USB 4 will allow you to connect anything including interfaces and keyboards while also being compatible with all flavors of USB 3.

Old MOTU MIDI USB devices require USB 1.1, one of the reasons I needed to learn about this. All of my interfaces are USB 2 or FireWire—Apple makes adapters that let me connect FW to my Studio Ultra.

BIAB 2024 Audiophile Mac
24Core/60CoreGPU M2 MacStudioUltra/8TB/192GB Sequoia, M1 MBAir, 2012 MBP
Digital Performer11, LogicPro, Finale27/Dorico/Encore/SmartScorePro64/Notion6 /Overture5