I have a single USB-C dongle in front of me that's the size of a large cigarette lighter that has 2 USB-A ports, 2 USB-C ports, an ethernet port, an HDMI port, and can charge a 15" MacBook Pro. It cost $40.
Because your girlfriend bought a bunch of different items instead of a single solution, and can't keep track of them, doesn't mean that Apple screwed up.
The dongle bullshit (and the USB-C "well yes it can do that but only if you have exactly the right cable, so you'd better bring a couple with you" thing) broke that simplicity, and put me back to having to make sure I had other crap with me, which was a shame.
Dragging their feet on moving iPad and iPhone over to USB-C, so they could at least share dongles & charging cables with Mac laptops, was/is salt the wound.
https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/B0872V4LFP/
Unlike single pigtail all-in-one dongles, this two piece no pigtail thingy supports 2x TB3 or 2x USB-C/DisplayPort displays since it is tapping both sides of laptop. (Incidentally this also lets you charge on the right to prevent potential issues with charging from left.)
> Who wants a stylus? You have to get them and put them away and lose them. Yuck! Nobody wants a stylus.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ELZK-Pow6fs
> Handwriting is probably the slowest input method ever invented. ... We reimagined it and what we're doing is completely different than what they (Microsoft) did. ... And what we said at the very beginning is if you need a stylus, you've failed.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w2xPt8txgGs
Apple now uses styluses on their iPad Pro's.
Modern styluses like the Surface Tablet Pen or Apple Pencil are for drawing and note-taking, in addition to still being able to use fingers on the touchscreen.
In the keynote, he never mentions "devices that require a stylus".
He says "who wants a stylus? Yuck!" and "if you see a stylus, someone did something wrong".
This spin into "well _obviously_ Steve meant X" is purely personality worship, not borne of his words.
Back in 2007, if something came with a stylus, it was overwhelmingly the case that the stylus was required.
I think it's a bit unfair to say that Apple deliberately change interfaces in order to push their adapters.
They've got 2 different problems to address, firstly they want to update and be in control of the interfaces to their hardware, Firewire,Thunderbolt,USB-C but, at the same time their machines seem to last quite a long time, so at any time there's a pretty significant number of users stuck on older interfaces and with hardware that uses older interfaces too (e.g. I have an older Firewire external hd that I now dongle to Thunderbolt, have noooo idea how I'm going to get that to work when I get this new machine).
So in order to allow all that to work they need to support a multitude of interfaces because getting a new laptop shouldn't mean throwing everything else out.
Simply add another dongle, the Apple “Thunderbolt 3 (USB-C) to Thunderbolt 2 Adapter” and you’re good to go.
I just tested mine before posting this, from a FW800 drive with the Apple FireWire-Thunderbolt adapter plugged in to the Apple Thunderbolt 2-3 adapter. Works on M1 Macs too.
Out of all the complaints about moving to USB-C, the idea that it is a conspiracy on Apple's part to sell dongles is the one that makes me roll my eyes the hardest. Say what you will about the USB-C-only MacBooks we've had in the last six years or so, but I'm fairly sure they were the first portable computers Apple ever shipped that had no proprietary connectors. No ADB, no MagSafe, no FireWire (not technically proprietary but largely DOA anywhere but Apple in the early 2000s).
I suspect if Apple had a magic wand (and/or even more of their money), they wouldn't have you buy dongles at all, they would have you buy new cables. Which is what I did years ago -- USB-C to Lightning, USB-C to mini-USB, USB-C to USB-A, even one USB-C to USB-B kicking around somewhere. And, because USB-C is not a proprietary standard, I don't think any of those cables are from Apple.
(Yes, I do have an Apple brand USB-C to USB-A dongle that I bought when I got my first USB-C laptop, because everyone was screaming how important they were. I almost never use it: if I find myself using it more than a few times for "dongle + cable", then I buy the correct cable.)