They basically made a line-in-the-sand on USB-C adoption, and it pretty much worked. I'd argue that an HDMI and SD card readers are less useful, and certainly far less versatile than additional USB-C ports.
For all the dongle jokes of a few years ago, I don't really see a reason to go back to less versatile ports in laptops.
You're right though the HDMI port might come in handy in random situations, better to include it than not. The SD port is the one I really don't get. And I still maintain that the continued lack of USB-A ports is a much bigger dongle problem than the lack of HDMI port was.
And they ALSO have the single most needed and bitched about port if it's absent, by far, for nearly all business users, which is HDMI. Far and away the best thing they could have added.
I personally will not use it often, but when I do, it will be invaluable, and for the users I support, it will be a tremendous increase in convenience and ease-of-use.
If you need a lot of USB-A ports, get a CalDigit dock and be done with it. If you need just 1, there are extraordinarily tiny adapters.
It's time to get over USB-A.
However, I would be using it in every conference room I use, multiple times daily. It’s the difference between plugging in the cable vs. finding the right dongle that’s security-cabled to the presenter cable, and connecting it in the middle.
MicroSD support would have actually made more sense to me than standard SD. But from what it looks like micro cards will still require a dongle of sorts.
https://tweakers.net/geheugenkaarten/vergelijken/#filter:q1Y...
Why is that?
Edit: I'm obviously oversimplifying, but most of the world doesn't have always-on data connections (e.g. rural areas) and manufacturers outside of silicon valley do optimise for people that may want to download media so the can view/listen when they're not connected. Nothing beats a cheap phone replaceable battery and storage.
/snark
SD card reader is a nice addition for a handful of pros, sure, but definitely not essential for everyone who does photo/video seriously.
MicroSD->SD is easy with a dummy adapter
Don't get me wrong, I would still buy a MacBook with no SD card slot, but I would occasionally run into cases where I wish I had that dongle that I lost somewhere.
There's a single use case for which can't easily be replaced by a USB-C dongle: using it as makeshift additional "internal" storage.
SD cards work pretty well for that, for most read-heavy use cases. On older Macbooks, with undersized internal storage, I'd keep an SD card in the slot. I'd keep downloaded media there, installers, even infrequently used applications. Assuming one's using a high quality SD card, performance was "plenty good enough."
I wouldn't keep anything crucial on an SD card, but everything on my local storage is backed up to the cloud anyway, so not really an issue.