USB-A is the one thing I sort of miss--mostly in the vein of (as in the case of SD and HDMI) it would be nice when traveling or in a random conference room to not be dependent on a dongle/hub to plug various things into my laptop.

The need will certainly decrease over time--probably to a greater degree than HDMI and SD. But in the meantime it will be a minor inconvenience now and then.

Anecdotally, I barely use USB of any kind on my laptop (a gaming PC). Bluetooth mouse, headphones, built-in card reader.

On my desktop... I have 4-6 USB-A devices plugged in at any given moment.

If I was buying a Macbook Pro for work, it would absolutely be getting a Thunderbolt 4 compatible dock, full of all the port goodness I needed.

I don't have a single USB-C device yet (except for iPhone power cable). All my devices that I plug in are USB-A. Few mices, few keyboards, STM32 board, Arduino board, few usb drives, usb crypto token, usb ssd.

That's not a big issue, IMO. Dongles are fine.

From TFA: “Sure, you’ll still need adapters to connect older USB Type-A devices…”

If you have to connect to a lot of third-party stuff that uses USB-A then I would say it’s not weird. I migrated all my personal devices and cables to USB-C though and it’s much better overall.

I’m not very happy with USB-C because it’s harder to plug in without looking. With USB-A, you can feel the port. With lightning, the tip of the connector is rounded so it’s easier as well.

After reading that USB-A is easier to plug in than USB-C for anyone I've just realized that we - as a species - will never agree 100% on anything.

Except that 50% of the time, you have the USB-A connector upside down.

More like 66% of the time... you need to try it, fail, turn it over, try it again, fail again, and then turn it back, and it'll fit.

That never happens to me. All ports that I encountered have identical configuration. I need to make a quick look on cable and I know how to position it.

The OP was saying he didn't need to look...

No, you are not weird, it's just Apple's idea of fostering progress by creating e-waste. It is a coherent strategy (irreplaceable parts etc.) that makes perfect sense form business point of view but is bad for users and terrible for the environment.

Technology moves on. It's reasonable to argue at what point you discontinue the direct legacy support but it's absolutely a question of when not if. There are other laptops out there with only USB-C at this point.

That's exactly what I'm talking about. At the size of Apple, the decision as to when they drop a particular interface or service is the day millions of devices get useless.

Unfortunately, we are still very bad ad recycling e-waste and only a part of it can be recovered successfully. As choosing the date has huge impact on the environment, a company that truly cares would take it into account.

> As choosing the date has huge impact on the environment, a company that truly cares would take it into account.

And you think they haven't because it doesn't align with when you want to move on. You are not the only user in the world.

I have a single item that uses USB A (my mouse). I plug it into a dock that I would have purchased anyway to handle multiple monitors, and that resolves my waste issues. YMMV.

Indeed. Surely USB-A is far more commonly used than SD cards.