What sort of scenarios require 3 or more USB ports simultaneously on the go? I can understand at a desk, but I'm having a hard time imagining a non-contrived scenario where you would need them regularly on the go.

Mouse, JTAG, serial connection to device under test, phone. Sometimes add a USB drive when taking measurements using test equipment.

Useful either in the lab, or at a customer's site. Which is why I only own Apple products for play.

For my personal usage: mouse, USB drive, phone.

Two external drives + phone + external sound card. Mouse + charging phone + charging external battery pack Mouse + keyboard + digital camera to download pics Two external sound cards + anything else

My use case:

1. Logitech mouse dongle

2. Disk/Stick

3. Phone

I ended up buying a Bluetooth Logitech MX Master instead, best mouse ever.

I'm more upset that the two ports aren't on the same side of the laptop. This precludes use of portable hard drives that use two USB connections.

I'm actually happy that Apple moved the USB ports away from each other. I used to have a non-Retina MacBook Pro and it was a royal pain to get two "large" USBs to fit at the same time.

I'd say the way to support those is having nice beefy power supplies for the ports, not having more of them.

If you think the 2014 port situation is annoying wait until you see the 2016....

It seems obvious Apple are aiming for no ports at all, with everything magically wireless all the time.

Which is fine, except that it really doesn't work at all for pro applications that need pro hardware, such as video and audio.