It’s different because of how the pins are connected. C-to-A uses 4 or 5 pins (with or without id pin) out of 24 in total for USB C. My guess is that it negotiates differently in that scenario. I’m guessing those problematic USB C devices only connect those 4 or 5 pins and don’t properly “talk USB C”.
And if you want it to be USB A or HDMI for a day, you just swap ‘m out! More brands should do this.
I have a microcontroller project that doesn’t do well with USB C, so I unexpectedly had to swap a C port for an A port. It’s amazing that this is possible.
For me, it’s the feature discovery that’s massively lacking. Last week I wanted to scale the selected area. Had to search for it online. The UX is the least intuitive one of all drawing software I’ve used.