As for ports, who still uses SD cards? Most people only take photographs with their phones and sync to the cloud directly.
In Apple’s view, the people who use only their phones for photos will be perfectly served with the M1 machines (Air, Pro 13, iPads). The ugly design is because they realize that it’s the lowest priority for Pros… performance and ports are far more important.
SD cards are used for a lot more than just cameras, especially among pros of many different stripes.
I don't think that many people are photographers, overall. Most people who buy "Pros" probably work in an office and their company buys the computers for them.
There are tons of small businesses in the physical automation space that run on hooking SBCs up to various things. Many of their components are 3d-printed, by them, until they get everything laid out just right. Source: security evaluations for the software those people write is an extremely lucrative side-hustle, and it's all word of mouth.
The photography business you casually ignore is quite large (Google "wedding photographer" in your city and then realize that most photographers don't even shoot weddings). Or just realize that on the order of 200k DSLRs ship in a given month, almost all using SD as at least one of the onboard cards. Add to that the high-end mirrorless segment which is about the same size, plus all the GoPro addicts (and just to head off the inevitable "what pro uses GoPros" comment, go look at b-roll in any car review). Then round it out with the dashcam/security camera crowd that either doesn't trust wifi or is required to have on-device recording for regulatory reasons.
There are also lots of scientific instruments which use SD cards for data logging in remote locations, especially since they're cheap so you can buy 2-3 from different manufacturers and duplicate the writes without appreciably increasing cost. Ditto other kinds of data loggers like IoT stuff that actually uses an air gap.
I am certainly not most people but still use SD cards as a "thumb drive", to format for the Raspberry Pi, for my wife's dash cam, and I also have a few digital cameras I still use that are SD-card based.
I do however expect this will be the last MacBook with an SD card slot.
Exactly.
to you. FTFY. Luckily, you're not in charge of what other people think are relevant and find useful.