> There are mini-DisplayPort and Thunderbolt 1 ports look the same, and no one complained about it. There are different capabilities on USB-A ports, and Apple never marked their USB-A ports blue, and no one complained about it.

Plenty of us complained about it. Some even saw it as a reason to avoid Apple.

> The alternative is like, what, we settle all the capabilities this port can have, and say that's it, we cannot add new capabilities to this port to confuse consumers, we must use a new port for new capabilities?

Yes. Different ports should look different.

> Yes. Different ports should look different.

Be careful what you wish for. New capabilities are added to ports all the time. If that's the case, we'll have a new port every year.

> The 13" MBP have non-equal USB-C ports, if true, is totally Apple's fault.

Isn't it Intel's fault given the limited number of PCIe lanes on their dual core CPUs?

> I don't think Apple disclosed that not all ports on 13" MBP has all the capabilities they bragged about

It's noted here: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT207256

It's insane to me that Apple sold a mini-DisplayPort edition of the Cinema Display for years, but doesn't bother explaining how to plug it in to the new Macs.

That's close to "in the basement in the disused lavatory".

Search "macbook thunderbolt pci" on Google? It's nowhere in sight by page 3...

Search "thunderbolt pci" on support.apple.com? It's result 8, after info about connecting TB displays, network adapters, cables, and so on.

Yes it's there, but let's not pretend Apple is going out of their way to note it.

> Search "macbook thunderbolt pci" on Google? It's nowhere in sight by page 3...

With "macbook pro 13" thunderbolt speed" it's the very first result (for me at least)

In any case, no, they aren't going out of their way, nor should they IMO. I think that would confuse many more people than the amount that are looking specifically to use > 2 full-bandwidth Thunderbolt connections at once on a dual core machine. I'd wager that > 95% are going to be happy they have two extra 10Gbps USB and charge ports.

Why would any potential buyer search that specified term instead of going to Apple's official tech specs page[1], which said absolutely nothing about the differences between the 4 ports? > 95% of the users won't have the need of more than 2 full bandwidth connection might be true, but a lot of them might have the expectation of using that two ports on either side.

Actually on that official tech specs page Apple bluntly claimed that:

  Four Thunderbolt 3 (USB-C) ports with support for:
  Charging
  DisplayPort
  Thunderbolt (up to 40 Gbps)
  USB 3.1 Gen 2 (up to 10 Gbps)

There's even no footnotes to say that 2 of them actually cannot reach 40Gbps bandwidth. If this is not false advertising I don't know what is.

[1] https://www.apple.com/macbook-pro/specs/

I agree it should be mentioned on that page too ("up to" would probably get them out of any false advertising claims). It's doubly confusing because there are 13" models with only 2 ports vs 4.

I don't know how "up to" works legally (IANAL). Can they claim "up to 80 Gbps" when the maximum they can achieve is 40 Gbps and get away with it?

I definitely recall seeing complaints about Thunderbolt (and I can't remember if I ever commented publicly, but I definitely thought it was a poor decision). Even so, they were probably less frequent due to the relative uncommonality of mini-DisplayPort, and mitigated by the fact that it was essentially MDP OR MBP+Thunderbolt - relative simple next to the variety of modes/standards USB-C can use.