So your opinion is that you want it. My opinion is I don't. HDMI is much more limiting.

Say that you're a manufacturer trying to keep an eye towards wants new vs supporting what's old, what decisions do you make to support new and retro without increasing the costs? At some point, having backseat decision makers giving input results in the car designed by Homer.

Of all of the things I've personally railed on Apple about in the past as well as others, their most recent HW offerings have been a great compromise. They've brought back some USB-A, SD card reader, HDMI, etc. They realized they've gone too far in certain areas, but some how they had a come to Jeebus meeting that reigned them back in.

If there were two HDMI ports, how would that impact your one-HDMI world? It's clear from the comments others would find it useful. So that's a valid compromise. It's on the back of the unit so you wouldn't have to stare at that second unused port and shudder in disgust.

> trying to keep an eye towards wants new vs supporting what's old

No one is suggesting they trade anything away. Apple has settled on USB-C. But there's plenty of extra room on the rear panel. Your argument assumes benevolence on Apple's part. For all you know the chips support dual HDMI, they removed it to save money which ends up being pure profit because they didn't reduce the product price at all. Do you think adding a second HDMI would increase the arbitrary price from $2k to $2k plus $20?

For the record, I would LOVE it if the Mac startup chime played "La Cucaracha"

> For all you know the chips support dual HDMI

Sure, but I don't think any Apple Silicon Mac has dual HDMI. While I guess it's possible that they spent the money to design dual HDMI support in their own chips and then said "but now that we've done this, we can save twenty bucks by not actually making the physical ports," but doesn't it seem likely that they also saved the money by…not putting it on the chip?

> Do you think adding a second HDMI would increase the arbitrary price from $2k to $2k plus $20?

Do you think anyone contemplating buying a computer that starts at $2K is going to suddenly stop, slap their forehead, and scream, "To connect two HDMI monitors, I'm going to have to buy a $15 USB-C to HDMI cable instead of a $6 HDMI cable! That extra $9 blows my budget! CURSE YOU, TIM COOK!"

I mean, I get what you're saying, but this just seems like a weirdly tiny hill to die on. :)

> For the record, I would LOVE it if the Mac startup chime played "La Cucaracha"

Well, who wouldn't.

You want a 2nd HDMI port, probably because you already own HDMI cables by the drawer full. That's a valid something.

However, it's not like you have to replace your monitors because of only one HDMI port. There are cables that go from TB4 to HDMI without dongles. Yes, you would need a new something instead of the something you already have.

Do you really know what the cost of adding a 2nd HDMI port to a system is? I do not. I do know it will be much more than the cost of the actual port connector itself. There's a new hole to be added to the case. There's more robotically soldered points to connect the new port to the system. Of the way the system is laid out on the board, is there enough bandwidth to supply signals to all of the ports? I have no idea the level of complexities involved in deciding what ports are available with the bandwidth of the system, but I do not for a second think that I could do it better.

Why miniDP? Just use the DisplayPort side channel that already exists in USB-C connectors; you can buy inexpensive USB-C-to-DP cables.