Intel helped make this move possible, but it doesn’t manufacture laptops. Apple took the heat for “donglegate”.
On the x86 desktop, usb-c is still surprisingly rare. I think my motherboard (that’s less than a year old) only has 2 usb-c ports and 8x usb-a.
And rightfully so. They took Intel's technology and told an unprepared and uninterested industry to switch or die. Naturally, very few manufacturers switched over and Apple's all-or-nothing strategy made more people mad than happy.
Having 4 lanes of Thunderbolt connectivity is awesome. It doesn't really fix the fact that none of them can easily connect to a wired keyboard or mouse.
> On the x86 desktop, usb-c is still surprisingly rare.
My motherboard only has one TB connector, everything else is type-A too. Most of the bandwidth is broken out over SATA or PCIe internally, and frankly I don't regret it one bit. 99% of my life, there is nothing plugged into that Thunderbolt port.
Intel says hi.
> People look down on the move to usb-c which I don’t quite get
People loved Thunderbolt for replacing Firewire. They hated Apple's choice because these USB-C Macbooks shipped with precisely zero USB-A ports and relegated every user to carrying around a dongle.
The year is 2024, we're almost a decade out from Apple going all-in on USB-C and the predominant peripheral connector is still type-A. I don't like it either, but plugging our ears and pretending like it's not a problem is silly and only makes consumers mad.
> and reminder that in classic usb fashion, usb4 still doesn’t even guarantee Pcie tunneling support.
That is in fact the correct default to use. Ever heard of Thunderspy? https://thunderspy.io/