I far prefer just plugging in one USB hub than plugging in like five different cables. I have a Thinkpad with loads of ports, but I just use two (one for a wireless mouse that's always plugged in).

I've got a reasonably cheap screen with USBC input. The screen is the hub.

It's great, as I only need to plug in one cable and my laptop is powered, connected to both my external monitors (displayport mst) and USB peripherals.

It's also a reason I asked not to have a Mac when I changed jobs. The Intel Macs and the older m1s don't support MST.

I wonder if the new m1s finally support it?

MST would work correctly _in Windows_ on my last-gen MBP, so I think it may be a limitation of macOS. Apple has only ever officially supported MST over Thunderbolt, never over USB or DisplayPort.

I think the usefulness of a bunch of different ports/port types is for when you're on the go. A hub/dock is of course way more convenient when you're at your main workspace. But if you're traveling or even just on your couch, having extra ports makes things much more convenient.

I like the hub/dock lifestyle as well but… USB-C/Thunderbolt is complex and there are many gotchas.

As more folks returned to the office, we get lots of issues with shitty network and other drivers on docks.

Issue with my rMBP is if i have too much on said single port; the laptop overheats and crashes. I end up with all 4 ports plugged in anyway to get decent performance.

It's good to have multiple options. I lug my laptop around and (rarely) need to connect multiple devices to it and sometimes I run out of ports. At home, I use a dock and the ports are useless, but that doesn't mean that I don't like the option to have more ports on the machine.

the great thing with this update is that you can still do that :)

I prefer USB-C with PD to all of the vendor specific ports except maybe MagSafe.

Same, but there still usually aren't enough ports in total. Looks like the new Macbook Pros have 2 ports on one side, 1 port on the other. At least keeping 2 on each side would've been much better.

I had the same thought, if you're charging on the right side you don't have a USB port left there.

That is the biggest problem with USB-C IMO. The ports can all have different capabilities and it's not always obvious what they can do.

For the most part though it seems they've settled on Thunderbolt, Charge, and bog standard ports. Are there any that do Thunderbolt + Charge?

It's a shame about the name because the Thunderbolt icon would be perfect to indicate a charge port. Instead we're stuck with a little plug icon that is usually isn't discernable.

That doesn't mean that people are copying them. Thunderbolt 3 adopted the USB-C format. Until USB-C, USB wasn't capable of delivering the power required for charging. It made logical sense to switch charging to USB-C. If anything, Apple copied USB-C.

I think the point was 2 ports is 1 port in practice. And so few ports used to be rare.

Sadly no. My new Thinkpad has only one USB-C port and it's used for power. So I cannot use the USB-C port while charging. And it has three USB-As and a freaking HDMI.