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Comment by Urgo | Hacker News Reader

Reading the comments I'm surprised so many people think 20 usb ports is so out of this world. For me this would be great! The list below isn't 20, but its still 14 and honestly I could find more things to keep plugged in w/o much effort either.

- mouse

- keyboard

- keyboard extra power

- audio

- streamdeck

- webcam

- printer

- photo scanner

- card reader

- phone

- microphone

- digital camcorder

- controller

- usb drive

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... and numerous midi controllers, instruments, and other musical gadgets in my home studio :-)

And the iLock. Don't forget that waste of USB space.

Don't forget:

- yubikey

And those of us working on electronics routinely connect another bunch of devices:

- logic analyzers

- oscilloscopes

- JTAG interfaces

- USB microscope

- dev board interfaces

- android embedded devices

- multimeters

That's why I'm so annoyed by manufacturers (hi Apple) reducing port counts and moving to USB-C only.

I do stuff with electronics & retrocomputing so add on top of that a bunch of USB->serial adapters to connect to old hardware; let's see

Apple //e

TRS-80 Model 100

Vt330 terminal

Plusdeck 2c cassette tape deck

Lego serial IR tower for RCX

Serial port for self-built cheap arduino clone (an NKC electronics freeduino serial) ( http://web.archive.org/web/20100131051737/http://mcukits.com... )

cable to connect TI calculators (I have a USB version of this too, though, so I don't need to use a USB-to-serial converter with my old serial cable based one.)

And that's just what comes to mind right now, I'm sure there are more.

Apple didn't move to USB-C only; they moved to the vastly-superior Thunderbolt 3. (Which, yes, is a superset of USB-C.)

Furthermore, that's just on laptops, since USB-A ports no longer fit in Apple's increasingly-thin designs. The iMac still has four USB-A ports, right now, today. The Mac mini still has two USB-A ports. The Mac Pro can have dozens of USB-A ports, if you want them.

USB-C is the connector. It can support various functionalities, including Thunderbolt 3, but you can't tell that from looking at the port or cable.

Also, I don't care about Thunderbolt 3. I don't have a single peripheral that supports it. What I do have is tens of devices that use USB, mostly 2.0.

> USB-A ports no longer fit in Apple's increasingly-thin designs

That is not true for all designs. Apple would have no problem fitting USB-A ports in MacBook Pros.

False. That proves you have not looked at the current MB Pro design. You are also blithely assuming there is space inside the case to just randomly add backwards-compatible shit that we all need to move on from in order to enable and promote more capable interfaces.

If you have "tens of devices" you need to plug into your computer at once, then stop buying laptops or get a USB hub. This isn't complex. No laptop ever designed, in history, would allow you to plug in that much USB-A stuff at once without buying adapters or a hub, etc.

So stop bitching at Apple about irrelevant stuff that Apple isn't to blame for.

> keyboard extra power

Come again?

Not OP, but presumably the keyboard is fitted with a USB hub requiring extra power.

My understanding was the second plug powered the LED lights in the keyboard but now I'm not 100% sure if its for that or just for the passthrough USB port on the keyboard itself.. maybe both?

Sometimes USB keyboards with PS/2 backward compatibility have 2 plugs, one for they keyboard you can use with a USB to PS/2 passive adapter, and one that supports a built-in hub or some other secondary high-power feature such as RGB.

I suspect this has more to do with PS/2 compatibility than it does requiring a second port's worth of power.

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