[bsder]

> (like with my MacBook and expensive but buggy TB dock)

Blame Apple, not the docks.

I couldn't keep any USB-A peripheral connected to my MacBook Pro through any dongle or dock alive for more than about 30 minutes. I must have tried 6 or 7 docks and a dozen dongles. All of them would fail and I would have to reboot to get it back.

I could pinpoint the OS version upgrade that broke everything as I managed to have two MacBook Pros with different OS versions. The bug followed the OS version on restore. The thread on Apple support for it is HUGE. I even tried paid escalation. Nope.

That was the final straw the drove me off of Apple and onto Linux for my laptop full-time. At least with Linux I can figure out what the hell is going wrong. Maybe Apple is nicer, but if you aren't on what Apple regards as the pure happy path--"Here be Dragons".

Maybe the docks are bad, but I would put way more blame on Apple. macOS simply isn't getting the resources it really needs.