I have this exact setup on the Thinkpad in front of me. It is great, and it's hilarious to see my phone's lockscreen pop up on the screen when I end up charging it with that cable.

You know what else this laptop has? Two ports I don't recognize (thunderbolt and dock?) on the left, and on the right, two USB-A, ethernet, SD card reader, HDMI, and headphone jack. It's a false dichotomy to say that you can only get the one-port connection by throwing away all the other ports you might need.

No one made that dichotomy, idk who you guys are arguing against.

If you don’t want Apple products cool. I personally have no need for Ethernet, sd card readers, and USB A 24/7. Like I said elsewhere this is a non problem for me.

Obviously if it is for you you can buy a giant dell laptop with 20 ports.

>>Being able to come to work and plug in a single cord and have it drive my mechanical keyboard, headphone amp, monitor, and power is pretty amazing IMO.

Just imagine having a dock, and not needing to plug any cords :-)

Also, like most things Apple removed (I'm looking at you, 3.5mm), how has the removal enabled your use case?

To put it other way: you could have everything you outlined even if they had magsafe + USB-A

but with removal of those things, we can't have things we want/need/desire, for no appreciable gain to you.

After 4yrs of using USB-C I don't have any USB-A stuff besides a single microsd card reader for an DSLR camera. Otherwise I have no use for a USB-A.

If I did I have two tiny adapters in my drawer... my office has a few of them if anyone needs them but I've never seen them used there either.

But that would still be possible if they added a USB-A to the laptop.

Like the original iMac eliminating SCSI, DIN-8 serial and ADB for USB-A, the point of removing old ports is to ensure support for the new ones. Local pain, long term gain. (Uh, once they sort out the many flavors using the USB-C form factor.)

All of those ports were already on the decline because their replacements already existed and were better. Every one of those ports existed on a machine with its replacement at some point.

Apple never made a machine with both USB-C and USB-A. They never allowed for a transition.

Because of that, people aren’t moving forward because they are holding back upgrades.

OP never heard of a USB hub

I’ve never seen a USB-C hub that works consistently.

So you're saying you only need one USB-C port... whereas the Macbook Pro has 4 and not a single USB-A one.

At work I've only used one.

At home I bought a 2 pack of USB-C to USB-A the size of a quarter and never had a problem... only because I don't want to buy a new SD-card reader. But now even my external harddrive is USB-C (and incredibly fast/tiny at that) I almost never use them.

https://www.amazon.com/Upgraded-Basesailor-Compatible-Charge...

I really don't get what the big deal is. A $9 purchase which I now use less and less as more products adopt USB-c...