The extra port competes with USB-C. If Apple wants to make USB-C more valuable to users, they must ensure companies make more products for it and, therefore, remove such redundant ports.
I have an HDMI monitor connected to my MacBook via a USB-C to HDMI/USB dongle, which also charges the computer, keyboard and trackpad, and another another via a UDB-C to DisplayPort cable.
I've been using my SDcard based camera less and less, both because my phones got much better and because they are much smaller. With an iPhone, which is a pretty decent camera, everything happens transparently and all my photos are automagically imported.
A reasonable docking station/port extender is small and has all those ports. I keep one in my backpack (even though I used it like once while traveling).
I really prefer it this way. I'd also love if Apple went back into making monitors that could charge my Mac and offer plenty of rarely used ports on its back.
There just are not enough ports on the pro laptops. 3 usable USB-c (monitor, monitor, keyboard/mouse/sdcard/network/legacy dock) and power. Docking stations only go so far as high resolution monitor/power passthrough and for those of use who end up using those features daily, our machines look like they were blessed by the flying spaghettis monster. 2-3 more USB-c ports would be a boon. Even freeing up one extra with a maglock power connector would be lovely.
I catch my Bride doing her photography workflow on her old, replaced macbook because it has the sdcard handy, she won't mess with the rat's nest in her office, and lord knows where the half a dozen dongles went.
>The extra port competes with USB-C. If Apple wants to make USB-C more valuable to users, they must ensure companies make more products for it and, therefore, remove such redundant ports.
The userbase of all tech products is too big for this to be reasonable now. This attitude was only successful during a time when fewer people overall each owned fewer devices individually. USB-A won and it will be around forever. HDMI won and it will be around forever.
HDMI will probably be around for TVs, but with USB 4 I imagine we're 5-10 years from most of the current ports going away completely, except for a collection of USB C ports of different levels (3, 3.x, 4).
Importantly, HDMI will be around for projectors. Almost every meeting room and every class room everywhere in the world has a beamer and an HDMI cable on the desk. I don't think this is going to change in the next 5 years. It took more than 10 years for most of the world to upgrade from VGA to HDMI cables, and HDMI works fine technically, so there's less pressure to upgrade to USB-C.
So for the foreseeable future, if you ever do a presentation, and you have a Mac, you are going to bring a dongle.
If you're a teacher and you don't want to deal with an unreliable dongle 5 times a day, the most convenient Mac for you is currently the 2015 Macbook Pro with its built-in HDMI port.
Or just do what my company started doing: chain a dongle to the projector. If you have a Type-C port, use the dongle. If you have HDMI, use the direct HDMI cable.
This $30 dongle is cheaper than upgrading all the projectors to support Type-C, and still allows older PCs to use HDMI.
Not really sure what's unreliable about USB-C to HDMI dongles... sure if you buy a crappy one they have issues, but good ones aren't expensive these days (at least, for projector resolution. YMMV if you're trying to do 4k or something)
Other than storage, no peripherals care about USB 4. We can't get away from USB-A because all of the devices that MATTER use it and its variations. Even today no one that I've seen makes a USB-C to USB-Micro (or USB-Mini - yes, I still have multiple products that use that) cable. I have no interest in having to chain multiple adaptors off all my computers for everything I do. Keyboards, mice, printers, cameras, microphones, audio adapters, gaming controllers, smartwatches, sensors, Arduino boards -- none of these things need any more speed or any more power. They don't want a new connector and they don't want to pay royalty fees for use of a new connector. The only things that might benefit from USB 4 are monitors (and how often to people replace monitors anyway? I ran my U2410s for a decade and only replaced them because I wanted a higher refresh rate) and storage devices (and to be honest I don't use external storage that often since online storage is so simple these days).
Section 2.2 of the USB Type-C Specification[1] explicitly forbids this kind of adapter:
USB Type-C receptacle to USB legacy adapters are explicitly not defined or allowed. Such adapters would allow many invalid and potentially unsafe cable connections to be constructed by users.
I'm all in on USB-C as a personal user, including a docking station and a bunch of dongles.
But USB-C's port/cable standards are such a huge mess that there will probably never be a time when you can walk into a random conference room and find a USB-C video plug which 'just works'. The reality is Mac users come into meetings with a dongle hanging off their machine. And maybe Apple finally realized that's not a good look.
This is like a homeowner saying "cars should park in a garage".
But some people live in apartments and some people park their car most of the day at work.
This is a way of saying - not everyone parks their computer at home with a nice reliable setup completely under their control.
Some people - for many reasons - have to use setups that are out of their control. Those people will be second-class citizens, carrying an assortment of duct-tape with them (dongles).
I have an HDMI monitor connected to my MacBook via a USB-C to HDMI/USB dongle, which also charges the computer, keyboard and trackpad, and another another via a UDB-C to DisplayPort cable.
I've been using my SDcard based camera less and less, both because my phones got much better and because they are much smaller. With an iPhone, which is a pretty decent camera, everything happens transparently and all my photos are automagically imported.
A reasonable docking station/port extender is small and has all those ports. I keep one in my backpack (even though I used it like once while traveling).
I really prefer it this way. I'd also love if Apple went back into making monitors that could charge my Mac and offer plenty of rarely used ports on its back.