I have a hard time believing that people use SD cards more frequently than they do USB-A. Sure, photographers probably get good use out of it, but developers, students, content creators who aren't shooting with DSLR, animators, musicians, 3D artists, regular artists and video editors will probably never touch it.
There are plenty of fairly common USB-A peripherals still in use anyways. A lot of audio interfaces, mice, keyboards and webcams rely on low-bandwidth but ubiquitous ports like USB-A. Apple and their pride would never put one on a modern Mac, but we're really at an impasse: neither side will adopt either standard, so it's more likely that we'll simply see wireless peripherals gain popularity instead. Not exactly bad, but kinda an asinine take for a company that just released a professional desktop computer with USB-A, but refused to add it to their laptops.
How many of those devices have fixed cables? I bought a few USB-C to Mini-USB/Micro-USB/Micro-USB3/USB-B/Lightning cables and replaced all the cables on my devices.
Mice, keyboards and webcams are typically non-negotiable. Audio interfaces are pretty regularly replaceable, but it certainly doesn't improve the compatibility quotient by leaving the ports off it.
> Devices stopped being shipped with USB-A a long time ago now.
Are you talking about Macs or devices in general? My 2021 laptop has an SD card slot, x2 USB A and x2 USB C (well, Thunderbolt 4). Despite how much I like USB C (all the devices I take with me have it), USB A is still here and will be for quite a while.
Oh, I forgot to mention that my laptop also has (full-sized!) HDMI and a headphone jack.
> Devices stopped being shipped with USB-A a long time ago now.
I interpreted this to mean the male side. Sure you can still buy laptops that accept USB-A, but I haven't seen any peripheral that still uses USB-A in a long time. I'm sure you could still buy a thumb drive with USB-A, but I wouldn't.
This is all kind of old tech though. Mice, keyboards and printers have been wireless for ages. Yes, I realize there's a gamer population that prefers wired peripherals for the latency, but some gamers only play on CRT monitors for the same reason - it doesn't make them not outdated tech. If I started a new job and they gave me a wired mouse I'd think they hate me.
The storage solutions you listed (thumb drives, hard drives, optical drives) aren't used daily by most people, and are all widely available with USB-C.
> Mice, keyboards and printers have been wireless for ages.
Doesn't necessarily mean they use USB-C though. Logitech's Unifying receivers are still (sadly) reliant upon USB-A, although someone modified one of them to use USB-C instead[0] :-)
Can you show me a decent optical drive with a USB-C cable? Because I can't find one.
Also, yes many mice and keyboards do come with Bluetooth. But all of the ones that require dongles for wireless are only USB-A. No USB-C Logitech Unifying/Bolt receivers.
All of my caddies use that weird micro-USB plug that can do USB-3, which is cool. In theory it'd be easy to convert that to USB-C... just change the plug on the end, or just make both ends USB-C. I typically find those cables to not lock into the port very well.
The strongest argument for a built-in SD card slot is it can give you something like 1TB of cheap additional storage as well as serving as a backup when traveling. Probably not a super-common use case though.
(Yes, photographers use SD cards although they often connect cameras directly and USB SD readers are cheap.)
There are plenty of fairly common USB-A peripherals still in use anyways. A lot of audio interfaces, mice, keyboards and webcams rely on low-bandwidth but ubiquitous ports like USB-A. Apple and their pride would never put one on a modern Mac, but we're really at an impasse: neither side will adopt either standard, so it's more likely that we'll simply see wireless peripherals gain popularity instead. Not exactly bad, but kinda an asinine take for a company that just released a professional desktop computer with USB-A, but refused to add it to their laptops.