>Apple is one of the world's biggest proliferators of e-waste through indirect means.
This seems like a very disingenous way of saying that Apple is one of the largest companies on the planet and sells hundreds of millions of devices a year.
Given that Apple regularly supports devices almost a decade old with firmware updates, has one of the most aggressive environmental agendas in the industry, and has invested billions of dollars in recycling programs, I would hazard a guess and say that on an adjusted basis they probably compare very favourably to competitors like Samsung and other OEMs.
>USB-A is the de-facto standard for thumb drives. Are we all just supposed to throw them away overnight because Apple blessed us with computers without USB-A ports?
You're upset about having to reach seven inches further to plug in a USB drive. If that's enough to cause you to throw all of your thumb drives away then I'd say that reflects more on you than on Apple.
>Or, they'll sell you a dongle for $19 which can be had on Aliexpress for $0.75.
There's a considerable engineering (and therefore cost) difference between a dongle that carries all the required electrical certifications, and a 75c Chinese firestarter that stands as much chance of damaging your computer as enhancing it, but that's moot anyway since nobody is forcing you to buy the Apple-made adapter in the first place.
>Would it have killed them to throw an extra USB-A 3.x port on the nearly empty front panel?
Given the form factor, quite possibly. It isn't as simple as just cutting out a slot and sticking a connector in, you need to route that connecter internally and find space on the logic board for the supporting circuitry, which has all sorts of difficult implications for the board layout.
And for what? How many thumb drives do you think the average person needs to plug in at any given moment? Why do you assume that your extremely narrow use-case is so important that it must be given the highest possible priority for Apple's engineers to meet?
The overwhelmingly vast majority of consumers, even pro consumers, will do just fine plugging their thumb drives into the back of the very small box sitting in front of them, or plugging in a USB hub to one of the USB-C ports on the front. Why add complexity and cost to solve a non-problem for a tiny subset of users who, if they're anything like you, were never going to buy an Apple product irrespective of what ports it has on the front?