My Phillips monitors have them on the bottom, my Dell monitor has them on both the bottom and side.

If anything, on the back is far easier to attach than the bottom.

Like only on the back? Or in addition to the sides? Because, if it's the former, that's surprising.

For the record, most monitors that do have USB ports have them on the sides/bottom so you can more easily plug/unplug flash drives and the such.

Apple seemed to envision these monitors as more of lightning dock with an LCD on them.

But with Apple hardware, your monitor USB ports are often the only USB ports.

I've learned to use my phone as a mirror -- I place it below the monitor with the selfie camera, and I can see what I'm doing well enough. It's still a bad design, though.