I have the 15" MacBook Pro which has 4 USB-C ports. I also picked up the HDMI adapter. The adapter has a USB-A port, an HDMI port, and a USB-C power pass-through port. By plugging my charge cable into it I get power, external USB, and an HDMI monitor and it takes up only 1 USB-C port. I also like the fact that I can plug this contraption into the laptop from either side.

I would much rather have 4 USB-C ports than even 8 ports that all do one thing only. It's like having $40 cash instead of 8x $10 gift certificates (of which perhaps only one you might want to use).

I understand your point, but my experience is the opposite. On my old MBP, I'd be using nearly every port when docked at the desk. My 2016 MBPwT has only four connections which means that at power+GbE+DP+mouse&keyboard I'm now out of ports for anything else. My only option is spend even more money on a docking station which has its own share of problems (I've been searching for a decent one forever).

It wouldn't be so bad if it wasn't for the fact that USB-C/TB3 has been such a disaster and even mechanically a disappointment.

I was stoked before getting my Dell Precision 5510 (aka XPS 15 Pro) that it would have a USB-C docking station. It would be awesome with one tiny cable for power+displays+all my desktop USB devices.

But it's never actually worked, I ended up RMAing the docking station. Since the laptop itself can only support one display, I can't have dual monitors. So now I have a 43" 4K monitor, a USB hub and a power connector that I need to plug in/out all the time. And Win10 still gets confused about DPIs and scaling and stuff.

On my ancient-but-still-kicking Dell Precision, at least the docking station actually works and you can simply click in and out in three seconds.

Get a CalDigit TS3, we have them at the Office and the Precision 5510 works even on Linux with them flawlessly.

Thanks, will try!

For now. As those old ports become more obsolete they won't disappear, they will be repurposed as USB-C. Some laptops have both mini-displayport and HDMI (HP Pavilion). My Dell XPS has USB-c/Thunderbolt 3 and HDMI. At some point, HDMI will become less common, and that will free up space and resources for other ports. As USB-A becomes less common, laptops will ship with an extra USB-C and one less USB-A, until eventually, no USB-A at all. When's the last time you saw a PS2 port on a laptop? It used to be standard.

For me, I'm enjoying the power of the USB-c/Thunderbolt connector on my Dell XPS. I use a docking station, which I'm sending 4k video and audio out to while receiving video, mouse, ethernet and power over the same cable. One cable docking is amazing, and really shows off the possibilities of the technology (although in this case I'm pretty sure it's Thunderbolt doing the heavy lifting).

But the CPU and chipset need to talk to all those ports. If any USB-C port can suddenly need to do Thunderbolt 3, that’s ridiculous bandwidth requirements. You probably can’t do that to 8 ports on anything.

This is exactly the sort of problem that tends to go away over time (often before it becomes an actual problem for very many people). The PCI-E and even RAM bandwidth of modern chipsets would have been absolutely astounding 10 years ago.

You can share bandwidth among the ports. The default option for 8 ports would use 4 PCIe lanes for each pair of ports. But even full bandwidth for all ports is 32 lanes, not too hard to do.

How many lanes does your CPU have?

Not enough, because it's six year old tech.

But even my CPU could manage to have 8 lanes feeding a GPU and 8 lanes feeding a switch for the thunderbolt ports, something that provides enough bandwidth for the vast majority of use cases.

> As those old ports become more obsolete they won't disappear, they will be repurposed as USB-C.

... But they have already disappeared. The 13" Macbook Pro that I'm talking about just has those two USB-C ports and none of the others. If you are plugged in for power you just have one port.

If you buy a 13" laptop you make concessions for on-device connectors, as you always have for ultra-portables. The solution is the same as it's always been, get a larger laptop, or use a connector hub. As for your Macbook Pro, that's Apple. Using the one company that's known for doing their own thing and obsoleting ports before every other company does as your case for USB-C having caused other ports disappear already isn't a convincing to me. For example, the touch bar version of the Macbook Pro 13" has four USB-C ports. Apple has made a decision to obsolete USB-A. I'm not surprised, for the reasons I gave before.

> If you buy a 13" laptop you make concessions for on-device connectors, as you always have for ultra-portables.

My old 10.1" has:

* 1 power connector

* 1 ethernet connector

* 1 VGA connector

* 3 USB ports

* 2 audio jacks

* 1 memory card slot

* 1 mysterious connector

Apple is very happy to sell you a $$$$ phone/laptop and then $$ dongles to make it actually work with the other things in the world.

This is old, but still gold

https://youtu.be/-XSC_UG5_kU