I’m with you on this. I’m a FAANG software engineer who does hardware stuff too and I have a 2020 MacBook Air with 2 (two!) USB-C ports. One for charging, one for other stuff. In my two years of owning the device I have not once ever been frustrated needing the third port. I do quite often use both of the two ports, but even needing three seems to never happen in my use case.
I don’t use external monitors with that device which probably makes a difference but IMO the point still stands - I think there is a silent majority of people who don’t want or care about more ports.
You seriously never needed to plug in a plain common USB-A flash drive or any other peripheral? Or flash an sd card or anything of the sort? Interesting.
Nope. I pass data around over the network, either via cloud or P2P. If I plug into an external display I use BT kbd/trackpad. And I do have a waterproof/shockproof camera with an SD card but I don’t use it every day, or even every week; I use my phone.
Flash drive? Hardly ever used one; networking existed before they were invented.
Yes, but so rarely does that use case actually happen. It has been fine with a dongle and not ever been a space issue. I carry a USB-C to A dongle with me at all times wherever my laptop goes. It basically lives with the laptop. Works just fine for every use case I have and it’s often the thing taking up my second slot. A bit annoying, but a fact of life. All SD card stuff happens on my desktop - anytime I need an SD card to connect to a computer I’m always at home - I’ve never once had that requirement on the go. External keyboards just don’t get used at all - I paid a bunch of money for a nice keyboard built into my portable machine, in fact one of the reasons I purchased the 2020 MacBook Air was because they got rid of the butterfly keyboard - so I don’t really use external peripherals with it.
Im a non-FAANG developer so i cant comment on what all the sheep/ad devs are doing;
but I can comment on what a polygot cross-platform cross-cloud software engineer who supports a plethora of native portable devices integrations require, and thats USB hubs with ports coming out the ye-ha - otherwise im constantly playing musical chairs.
I commented that I didn’t have a need a lot of ports with my use case and you commented that you did with yours. Good HN discussion.
But why did you have to begin your comment with the condescending “all the sheep/ad devs”? It makes you look insecure and I only read beyond that because your comment was so brief.
There are machines with lots of ports and machines with few and someone’s choice of which to use is not a moral judgement.
I don’t use external monitors with that device which probably makes a difference but IMO the point still stands - I think there is a silent majority of people who don’t want or care about more ports.