[rcoveson]

An expansion card that is flush with the rest of the laptop frame compared to a dongle that dangles from the side is absolutely not just an aesthetic difference. Expansion cards don't need to be disconnected and reconnected whenever you move the laptop. Dongles do. You can't put a laptop with four dongles hanging off of it into a bag.

The distinction between USB-C and PCIe, on the other hand, is meaningless for most peripherals.

An imaginary handheld AM radio is more similar to a handheld FM radio than the handheld FM radio is to a desktop FM radio, from the user's perspective. You could say that "comparing AM to FM is apples to oranges", but the user wouldn't care as much as they care about how they actually interact with the thing.