sure, but all that functionality remained externally - just not as part of the laptop. locking down the laptop is fundamentally different.
I think what they did was they changed what it looks like to be a pro user. The average user gets a sleak experience while a "pro" user is going to have a docking station.
I actually like that they transitioned to the docking station approach. It means two things:
1. I have a lighter macbook pro for work travel 2. At my desk, one single cable: charges the computer; connects two additional monitors, ethernet, keyboard, mouse, sd card reader, high speed storage, and a scanner. I much prefer that one single cable vs the bundle of cables I used to have to plug/unplug each time I wanted to take or return my computer.
Sure, the industry ended up following them on a lot of this, but that should be as much a cause for concern as the rest of it. An awful lot of the pro audio / video work that happens on high end Apple hardware could absolutely happen on a machine where the only software comes in via an app store.