Hell, you can now buy monitors that work only with USB-C. It’s clearly the way everything is going, Apple just moved a bit too fast.
That you have to drag with you if you want those ports away from your desk. Plug into a TV or projector and you need a dongle. No thanks. Ports are fine by me and I don't care if that adds 0.5mm or some stupid aesthetics nonsense.
I'm a photographer, so the SD card slot is nice for me personally, but it really doesn't make sense to build it into the laptop. It must be used by a tiny percentage of people.
For SD cards, the majority of people don’t use SD cards (even customers for the pro line). It’s a concession to an important niche, but forcing that niche to have a USBC adapter that is built into the SD card (maybe not possible?), having a separate SD card reader dongle, or having the camera itself be the SD card reader all seem like better choices than forcing all laptops to have an SD reader.
What’s the compelling story for why SD card or HDMI strictly need to be built in for all customers? The story for HDMI is kind of the strongest because the HDMI market is much more common day-to-day and USB-C as a display technology hasn’t yet permeated standalone TVs and projectors.
As it stands, I still have an analog audio out because I've procrastinated on getting a usb digital in/out, and I also have a ethernet <-> thunderbolt connector because I only got about 400Mb/s when going via the monitor instead of 950+ when going direct.
3 small connectors all on 1 side isn't that bad.
That being said, I welcome the HDMI addition mostly for older conference rooms which aren't equipped with Apple TV / Webex Proximity / etc.
- 4x Thunderbolt 4 (1x with power supply) - 3x USB-A 3.2 - 1x USB-A 2.0 (with power supply) - 1x Gigabit Ethernet - 1x UHS-II SDXC - 1x Audio
Actually, it looks like this same hub is sold by both Sonnettech and Kensington.
https://www.sonnettech.com/product/echo11-thunderbolt4-dock/...
https://www.kensington.com/p/products/device-docking-connect...