Apple's idea of elegance has always been the same. Do you think it was always convenient to not have a floppy drive? It's hard to imagine now, but there was a time when the floppy was as important as an SD drive or a USB port.
With only 2 ports, you need a ridiculous number of big dongles or hubs to get serious work done, and any pro user with >1 external HD, display, or gigabit wired is rightfully wondering what the hell Apple was thinking.
Wouldn't having a single multi-port hub actually be superior? Instead of a bunch of cables connecting your laptop to multiple different devices you have one cable to the hub. Much easier to get up and move with.
See the first five minutes of this video [3], which actually involves Apple's "Digital AV Multiport" adapter, to see the near-term experience of "dongle hell."
[1]: http://www.bourgedesign.com/
[2]: http://www.macrumors.com/2016/11/03/owc-debuts-13-port-thund...
Most people still use USB-A accessories.
See the difference?
See the similarities?
Mice and keyboards work perfectly well on a USB-A connection, there is really no need to force everyone to buy dongles or to upgrade all your peripherals to USB-C.
In fact there is some parallel here; we all know that USB-C is the way of the future. Every phone, every laptop, every desktop will eventually have these ports for everything. It will replace every proprietary DC power plug. But right now, just like it was in 1998, the future isn't quite here yet.
And that was just one model, the Air. If you wanted an optical drive you could buy a white macbook or a MBP. Now there are no options.