I think the long game here is that USB will shift towards USB-C. Plenty of new Windows devices have USB-C ports, and it's only a matter of time until peripheral manufacturers transition over and the old USB ports become useless.
The long game may trend towards USB-C, but in the meantime Apple made the Macbook Pro less usable for people who want to do actual work. How is it better to have to manage a bag full of dongles when Apple easily could've included the ports that people frequently use like SD and USB-A?
It was a bad decision 2 years ago when they introduced this generation of Macbook Pros, and it's still a bad decision.
>Apple made the Macbook Pro less usable for people who want to do actual work
That's straight up nonsense. You can still do everything you could do with a USB-A port. I'm also in the full USB-C camp and any of my old USB-A devices just use a USB-C to USB-A cable. I am in no way hindered from doing actual work.
I just carry a small Anker USB-C hub in my laptop case -- has two USB-A ports, an HDMI port, and an SD card reader. I must say, though, I've used it less than I expected to when I got it.
The point is not that you can't do those things, the point is that it's been made more difficult for little to no discernible benefit.
Apple has been going down this path of making thinness such a high priority that utility has become a second class citizen. So yeah I can carry around dongles for everything, but why? So the side of my MacBook Pro can have pleasing congruity in it's ports?
It is good that Apple has moved towards a standard port rather than just slapping 4 Thunderbolts on there. But the loss of HDMI, USB a, and sd card slots makes for more hassle with little upside, not to mention they did away with magsafe.
At least they fixed the keyboard and upgraded memory in a bug way, so maybe things are headed in the right direction now.
>the point is that it's been made more difficult for little to no discernible benefit
That is not true either. Although it cost me some money, I much prefer having 1 type of port to worry about instead of a million types and it has tremendously improved some of my workflows by being able to daisy-chain devices together. I can sit down at my desk, plug in 1 cable and have access to everything I need. Although I had a similar setup with a dock, I was limited to the number of ports. With the current system, I can keep extending and daisy-chaining to my heart's desire.
Just because it doesn't work for you doesn't mean it doesn't work for anyone just like my use case doesn't work for everyone either. To say that there's no discernible benefit is just silly. There are pros and cons just like with anything.
>carry around dongles for everything
That's a straw man. I don't carry any dongles with me whatsoever except for a multi-purpose video adapter because I still, unfortunately, have to present in a few rooms that have VGA outputs.
How would it make your life worse if in addition to the usb-c ports there was a sd card port and usb-a? Does switching away from magsafe make it more likely or less likely for the MacBook to get accidentally pulled to the floor?
I'm not saying that no one will find usb-c useful or that it works for no one's workflow.
I'm saying that going all usb-c doesn't provide much, if any benefit. They could've given you your usb-c ports and included the other ports.
If it works for you, great. The problem is that they could've made it work for a lot more people, but they chose not to in their Don Quixote-like chase for thinness and aesthetics.
The standard was adopted by IEC in 2016. How many years more do you reckon we should live "in the future" and use dongles because "one day we won't have to"?
I'm already living this future. I've replaced my usb-a, micro-usb, mini-usb, and lightning products. It's wonderful for travel, decluttering, and not having to worry about dongles.
That's pretty nice - but people who need to interface with a wide variety of devices in their line of work, or don't know upfront what the situation in the field will require don't have that luxury. So instead using a laptop with minimal 3 standard ports (USB-A, USB-C, HDMI), they have to carry dongles that get lost, bent, stop working etc...MBP is simply not a "pro" machine - it's a mainstream consumer machine that looks fancy on the desk instead of being functional. And that would be totally great if it was called "Macbook" and there was a "Macbook Pro", with ports, battery life, cooling, keyboard etc...
That's what they said about ADB to USB, USB to Micro-USB, Micro-USB to USB-C. Once everyone settles on USB-C, some new thing will come out that necessitates yet another port change. So much for "Universal".
