I think legacy USB peripherals are very common. Almost all of my peripherals are legacy USB; I think I only own a single USB-C peripheral. Old stuff still works, so I don't need to buy new ones.
I guess that the people who use $350 boards also mainly use USB-C. Unless you want to connect old hardware to it but I don’t see that use-case.
Not being able to connect my devices to this board is a blocker for me.
But, sure: It's definitely even cheaper than that to just sit back and complain about it.