[pm7]

I think in future devices are supposed to support as many popular functions as possible. Due to trend of thin devices we need smaller ports and fewer of them. Multiple possible use of same ports helps.

> As a user there is no easy way for me to tell the 12-inch Macbook's USB-C port is different than the Air/Pro unless you explicitly search for it in the tech specs

Seems like manufacturer failure.

> If you see an HDMI port on a laptop you can be sure it's going to output some kind of video signal over that.

But even HDMI/DP have versions. It's especially visible now, as we have >=4k HDR high-frequency displays.

[blattimwind]

> Due to trend of thin devices we need smaller ports and fewer of them.

People keep repeating this lie for some weird reason. Similar to the "3.5 had to go because phones are too thin for it" lie. Why? Why do you keep lying? What possible incentive do all these people have? Is it self-deception? "Oh yeah I'm totally fine with losing X, Y and Z because I get thinness and weight reduction in exchange!" You get neither.

iPhone 5 124x59x7.6 mm, 112 g

Six years later

iPhone 11 150x75x8.3 mm, 194 g

Now yes, its true, the iPhone 5 was part of a group of lightweight and thin phones that are now extinct, because clearly things are getting smaller, thinner and more lightweight to boot.

For notebooks the same observations can be made. The 2008 MBA is only about 100 g heavier than the current model, the thinnest part is the same(!) and thickest part about 4 mm thicker (1.9 vs 1.5 cm). A slight but minuscule improvement. You could have a 1.3 kg notebook at the end of the 90s, btw.

[jacquesm]

I blame marketing. People will run after every fad as though it is mission critical stuff and will re-tell marketing copy verbatim as though it is their own thoughts. I've seen this with a friend who watches Top Gear a lot, I heard him say something that did not make sense for him to say and tracked it back to a specific episode of Top Gear and confronted him with it. He was surprised himself!

This stuff really works and it gets under people's skins in ways that they are not aware of. If you want to keep an even keel I would like to propose that the only way you will be able to do so is to radically limit your ingestion of any kind of media.

[gumby]

I think your use of the term “lie” here is a bit extreme.