No listing of all the ports and connectors? THAT is what separates a pro computer from the incapable POS’ we’ve been getting called MacBook Pro.
UPDATE: Four Thunderbolt 3 ports. That’s all. Good lord... from their web site:
” MacBook Pro is equipped with four ports, so you can do all of that from either side. Existing devices are easily connected with a cable or adapter. And Thunderbolt 3 is reversible, so no matter how you plug in, it’s always right side up.”
It’ll still be a massive shitpile of adapters on a regular desk. Hate this mentality of theirs. Is it really asking for too much to expect some actual USB, Ethernet or other kinds of ports to REDUCE the number of adapters?
Suck it up. All of those ports are going away. Not just with Apple, but for everyone. The only one that will still be around for some time is Ethernet. I have an adapter for that which stays on the Ethernet cable. Not exactly a big deal.
Is HDMI going away? Or the mini DV? I get the switching for USB but almost no place one goes today can one connect to an external presentation screen, projector etc with USB-C. One missing dongle and your presentation is in trouble. Imo they should have kept HDMI and the SD card slot.
If that’s your use case (roaming presentation machine) then it’s on you to pack backups. Scout’s motto, Be Prepared. Not my use case tho, so don’t want space and controllers wasted for it. And my cameras use CF, not SD...thus it makes more sense that each person use the reader that matches their gear.
You have got to be kidding. Apple's design is simple and elegant, not to mention the eventual direction ALL computer makers will go.
VGA... I almost sprayed my coffee out of my nose when I read that.
What's weird is that his argument is that "it is doable", as if anyone has said that it's not possible for Apple to engineer any of those things into a Mac notebook.
We'll see if it still has the keyboard/battery/ top case melded together design like the previous generations but in the EU it starts at 2,699€ and quickly blasts past 3,000€.
PS: what the heck are ' force-cancelling woofers'?
Marketing lingo for “we decided to use six 4 cent greeting card quality speakers to accommodate the design and needed to make this deficiency sound cool”.
In other words - the sound will be garbage as they couldn’t put in a decent sized speaker cone physically capable of producing sound waves - so jammed in 6 small deficient ones and using harmonic algorithms to give the impression of full sound through volume.
In in other words, it will sound like a louder iPhone.
No listing of all the ports and connectors? THAT is what separates a pro computer from the incapable POS’ we’ve been getting called MacBook Pro.
UPDATE: Four Thunderbolt 3 ports. That’s all. Good lord... from their web site:
” MacBook Pro is equipped with four ports, so you can do all of that from either side. Existing devices are easily connected with a cable or adapter. And Thunderbolt 3 is reversible, so no matter how you plug in, it’s always right side up.”
It’ll still be a massive shitpile of adapters on a regular desk. Hate this mentality of theirs. Is it really asking for too much to expect some actual USB, Ethernet or other kinds of ports to REDUCE the number of adapters?
It has USB. USB-C is the latest iteration of USB. You don’t need adapters, you just need the proper cables for your devices. Do you understand that? Cables. Plenty of A-to-C cables.
Are you honestly asking for an ethernet port!?
I give at lot of customer presentations and they all, without exception, give me a HDMI cable for the big screen in the meeting room. So it is not the proper cable that is the issue but the proper port on my laptop. And don't make me "educate" my customers.
No listing of all the ports and connectors? THAT is what separates a pro computer from the incapable POS’ we’ve been getting called MacBook Pro.
UPDATE: Four Thunderbolt 3 ports. That’s all. Good lord... from their web site:
” MacBook Pro is equipped with four ports, so you can do all of that from either side. Existing devices are easily connected with a cable or adapter. And Thunderbolt 3 is reversible, so no matter how you plug in, it’s always right side up.”
It’ll still be a massive shitpile of adapters on a regular desk. Hate this mentality of theirs. Is it really asking for too much to expect some actual USB, Ethernet or other kinds of ports to REDUCE the number of adapters?
It has USB. USB-C is the latest iteration of USB. You don’t need adapters, you just need the proper cables for your devices. Do you understand that? Cables. Plenty of A-to-C cables.
Are you honestly asking for an ethernet port!?
I give at lot of customer presentations and they all, without exception, give me a HDMI cable for the big screen in the meeting room. So it is not the proper cable that is the issue but the proper port on my laptop. And don't make me "educate" my customers.
Nice try. Any reasonable person would simply have an HDMI adapter. The reality is that if you're dealing with equipment using old/obsolete connectors, then you should know be "educated" enough to have that USBc->HDMI adapter in your laptop bag.
Of course your customer won't be expected to upgrade all their equipment with modern connectors. That's the nice thing with USBc/TB3. One can adapt to just about everything.
These do look very nice, especially good that they seem to be putting some effort into having a decent GPU now. Shame it's not Nvidia, but still we can't expect Apple to get over their spat with Nvidia for at least 7 years. The keyboard change is really an admission that the butterfly mechanism was a bad design. If the third iteration was reliable, Apple wouldn't have changed back. I do think there is some psychology in that decision, but still.
It does seem that as soon as the world starts to catch up to the connectors on Apple's current computers, they switch to something else. HDMI is becoming fairly ubiquitous, but now we need an adapter. HDMI is thin enough to fit on the Macbook, there is no reason to not include it. It's incredibly useful to be able to connect to devices without an adapter. No worries if you forget it, or don't know you're going to need it before you leave. I've replaced the presenting PC with my 13" 2015 MacBook several times when people have had issues, which wouldn't be possible without its built-in HDMI.
sudden outbreak of common sense, maybe finally a decent keyboard again to replace the pieces of shit they put in over past years and a proper "esc" key is the right call ... excellent! its progress in the right direction but it looks like it still needs $100+ dollars of adapters to do anything useful.
how hard is it to make a "pro" machine that does not need an adapter to plug into HDMI (essentially what is required by any presentation in business or education) .
but non butterfly keyboard and a decent 'esc' key is already a good first step to get back to the formerly brilliant mac book pros.
That's still an adapter, it adapts from one format to another, just all in one cable.
It is no more an adapter than a HDMI to HDMI cable is, or a HDMI to mini-HDMI. USB-C literally contains the HDMI spec.
How many years has Thunderbolt been around and yet people still don't understand that it's "the port that does it all" to include HDMI, Gigabit Ethernet, etc,.
I work for a large company in a new building. Conference rooms all have big TVs.
In every table are retractable HDMI/Ethernet cords.
Also just sitting on every table are little keychains with 3 adapters:
1 is iPhone to HDMI (plus a USB-C-looking shape on the output side [not sure if this can be an input; doubt it]). The other two I might not know the names: Mini-DisplayPort? The one that fits my 2009 MacBook: Really small fat-rectangle, with two tiny corner-cuts. Display Port? The one that looks like HDMI at first glance, but has a significant corner-cut on only one side.
Oops, I see the coming-reaction here. "None are USB-C shape to HDMI". That's true actually.
No listing of all the ports and connectors? THAT is what separates a pro computer from the incapable POS’ we’ve been getting called MacBook Pro.
UPDATE: Four Thunderbolt 3 ports. That’s all. Good lord... from their web site:
” MacBook Pro is equipped with four ports, so you can do all of that from either side. Existing devices are easily connected with a cable or adapter. And Thunderbolt 3 is reversible, so no matter how you plug in, it’s always right side up.”
It’ll still be a massive shitpile of adapters on a regular desk. Hate this mentality of theirs. Is it really asking for too much to expect some actual USB, Ethernet or other kinds of ports to REDUCE the number of adapters?
It has USB. USB-C is the latest iteration of USB. You don’t need adapters, you just need the proper cables for your devices. Do you understand that? Cables. Plenty of A-to-C cables.
Are you honestly asking for an ethernet port!?
I give at lot of customer presentations and they all, without exception, give me a HDMI cable for the big screen in the meeting room. So it is not the proper cable that is the issue but the proper port on my laptop. And don't make me "educate" my customers.
This. HDMI is THE standard when it comes to video connections for presentations. It’s simple and nearly universal. I have yet to see a video projector in a conference room that doesn’t have it and beyond that, none of these projectors can do 4K, so being able to connect 100 monitors via the thunderbolt 10 port is a completely moot point. My daughter needed a new laptop for college and her first question was “does it have an HDMI port, ‘cause that’s what I need to do presentations”
Now all of the Apple sycophants will go on and on about ‘just buy an adapter’ and ‘be prepared’ and how it’s obviously your fault for not having the right equipment with, and I assume that none of these people have ever forgotten anything or had an adapter break or have someone borrow it and not return it, etc. Nor have they had an adapter not work properly. The fact of the matter is, rather than have a couple of the most common ports available to people, Apple made a decision that ‘we can make USB C do everything’ and, user convenience be damned, they can go out and buy all the ports cables and docks and hubs.
As for “cables vs adapters” - that’s a completely semantic argument and ignores the point.
No listing of all the ports and connectors? THAT is what separates a pro computer from the incapable POS’ we’ve been getting called MacBook Pro.
I can't tell if you're being serious or not. This remains a crazy take on Thunderbolt 3.
Wow. Nice insult, Mike. Real people don’t expect to invest in all new accessories and adapters every time they eventually replace their old outdated MacBook Pro. There should be an expectation of some backward compatibility.
There is no insult here.
Thunderbolt 3 is USB-C which is USB. So, there is backwards compatibility. Computer users have always, always had to either get new cables or adapters. It has been thus for 40 years, and you know it.
If you don't want a pile of adapters, then don't get them. There are a plethora of docks and breakouts -- and we've reviewed nearly all of the good ones.
I can’t believe you just wrote that. Thunderbolt 3 is not USB-C, nor is it USB. USB C is a connector that is capable of carrying USB 3 and Thunderbolt data as well as higher current for charging. That is partly why USB C is such a bloody mess. One port might do everything or it might do only one of those things. And the cable might be able to do some or even all of these, but you’re never quite sure.
We'll see if it still has the keyboard/battery/ top case melded together design like the previous generations but in the EU it starts at 2,699€ and quickly blasts past 3,000€
Just the other day you were waxing eloquent on how much you love life in the EU.
You should be equally thrilled with how the level of taxation impacts the price of Apple products there.
I like this update. I didn't have a problem with the keyboard, but a lot of people did, however, I'm not sure they'll stop complaining.
Going to 512GB as the base level SSD is good, I've been struggling with 256GB since 2016, and it's just not enough for me, apparently.
As for TB3, get over it. They're not going to add in a bunch of single use ports just to make you happy. If, after 3 years, you're still upset about it, go have a long, hard look at yourself in the mirror. Let's face it the argument that "I don't want to buy this new computer because I'd have to buy some new cables as well" gets weaker over time.
No listing of all the ports and connectors? THAT is what separates a pro computer from the incapable POS’ we’ve been getting called MacBook Pro.
UPDATE: Four Thunderbolt 3 ports. That’s all. Good lord... from their web site:
” MacBook Pro is equipped with four ports, so you can do all of that from either side. Existing devices are easily connected with a cable or adapter. And Thunderbolt 3 is reversible, so no matter how you plug in, it’s always right side up.”
It’ll still be a massive shitpile of adapters on a regular desk. Hate this mentality of theirs. Is it really asking for too much to expect some actual USB, Ethernet or other kinds of ports to REDUCE the number of adapters?
It has USB. USB-C is the latest iteration of USB. You don’t need adapters, you just need the proper cables for your devices. Do you understand that? Cables. Plenty of A-to-C cables.
Are you honestly asking for an ethernet port!?
I give at lot of customer presentations and they all, without exception, give me a HDMI cable for the big screen in the meeting room. So it is not the proper cable that is the issue but the proper port on my laptop. And don't make me "educate" my customers.
This. HDMI is THE standard when it comes to video connections for presentations. It’s simple and nearly universal. I have yet to see a video projector in a conference room that doesn’t have it and beyond that, none of these projectors can do 4K, so being able to connect 100 monitors via the thunderbolt 10 port is a completely moot point. My daughter needed a new laptop for college and her first question was “does it have an HDMI port, ‘cause that’s what I need to do presentations”
Now all of the Apple sycophants will go on and on about ‘just buy an adapter’ and ‘be prepared’ and how it’s obviously your fault for not having the right equipment with, and I assume that none of these people have ever forgotten anything or had an adapter break or have someone borrow it and not return it, etc. Nor have they had an adapter not work properly. The fact of the matter is, rather than have a couple of the most common ports available to people, Apple made a decision that ‘we can make USB C do everything’ and, user convenience be damned, they can go out and buy all the ports cables and docks and hubs.
As for “cables vs adapters” - that’s a completely semantic argument and ignores the point.
So can we assume you bought your daughter a Windows laptop then?
This. HDMI is THE standard when it comes to video connections for presentations. It’s simple and nearly universal. I have yet to see a video projector in a conference room that doesn’t have it and beyond that, none of these projectors can do 4K, so being able to connect 100 monitors via the thunderbolt 10 port is a completely moot point. My daughter needed a new laptop for college and her first question was “does it have an HDMI port, ‘cause that’s what I need to do presentations”
Now all of the Apple sycophants will go on and on about ‘just buy an adapter’ and ‘be prepared’ and how it’s obviously your fault for not having the right equipment with, and I assume that none of these people have ever forgotten anything or had an adapter break or have someone borrow it and not return it, etc. Nor have they had an adapter not work properly. The fact of the matter is, rather than have a couple of the most common ports available to people, Apple made a decision that ‘we can make USB C do everything’ and, user convenience be damned, they can go out and buy all the ports cables and docks and hubs.
As for “cables vs adapters” - that’s a completely semantic argument and ignores the point.
I'll byte.
What about the users who want this laptop, with 4 USB-C ports, and never ever want to do a presentation? Never in need of HDMI?
See Phil's take on ports: “Do you think there’s ever a chance that the SD card slot makes a comeback?”
Schiller replied:
“Probably not, again nothing about the future is in stone, and things can always change. But, as we’ve been spending a lot of time with MacBook Pro surveying what our customers use, what I/O they need, where their needs are growing and how they are changing, and did a lot of soul searching on it and asking ourselves about a lot of connectors about USB-A about SD card readers, about HDMI and requestioning everything. And really what we came down to is more and more customers are taking advantage of USB-C and Thunderbolt, love the incredible headroom in performance there is there, the higher power there is, the charging ability there is, and so we think having on the highest-end notebook four USB-C/Thunderbolt ports gives the most headroom for the things you will be doing in the years ahead. And the trade-off is for a few traditional media types like SD card readers means using an adapter but there are USB-C adapters, I carry one for that. And ultimately, that gives you the highest performance and most flexibility with this arrangement. So after a lot of soul searching, we think we’ve done the best thing for customers with the I/O we have, meaning we don’t have every port type in the world on it.”
No listing of all the ports and connectors? THAT is what separates a pro computer from the incapable POS’ we’ve been getting called MacBook Pro.
UPDATE: Four Thunderbolt 3 ports. That’s all. Good lord... from their web site:
” MacBook Pro is equipped with four ports, so you can do all of that from either side. Existing devices are easily connected with a cable or adapter. And Thunderbolt 3 is reversible, so no matter how you plug in, it’s always right side up.”
It’ll still be a massive shitpile of adapters on a regular desk. Hate this mentality of theirs. Is it really asking for too much to expect some actual USB, Ethernet or other kinds of ports to REDUCE the number of adapters?
It has USB. USB-C is the latest iteration of USB. You don’t need adapters, you just need the proper cables for your devices. Do you understand that? Cables. Plenty of A-to-C cables.
Are you honestly asking for an ethernet port!?
I give at lot of customer presentations and they all, without exception, give me a HDMI cable for the big screen in the meeting room. So it is not the proper cable that is the issue but the proper port on my laptop. And don't make me "educate" my customers.
Nice try. Any reasonable person would simply have an HDMI adapter. The reality is that if you're dealing with equipment using old/obsolete connectors, then you should know be "educated" enough to have that USBc->HDMI adapter in your laptop bag.
Of course your customer won't be expected to upgrade all their equipment with modern connectors. That's the nice thing with USBc/TB3. One can adapt to just about everything.
Eventually, HDMI will be gone from new equipment.
I was critical of the 'uni-port' design back in 2016 and your comment could easily have been from back then.
At that time I said wholesale switch was unnecessary. That doesn't mean staying anchored in the past or closing my eyes to the future, it means moving with the times and transitioning in the true sense of the word.
Ethernet, HDMI, USB. No fuss. Simple.
Apple chose the non-simple (for the user) option of making people buy cables, adaptors or docks, and back then they were expensive.
Many competitors who went down similar paths actually put docks in the box. Problem solved.
People tried to defend Apple's decision by throwing that 'legacy' term around only to have Apple include all those legacy ports on the iMac from the following year! Where they remain to this day. More than three years later.
Since that 2016 machine (and the design decisions that came with it) we have learnt a lot and many of us were borne out in what we said at the time.
We've been through the USB-C/Thunderbolt cabling nightmare (great care is still required when choosing cables). We've got Apple repair programmes that cover almost every butterfly keyboard ever made, culminating in a switch back to a scissor mechanism. We've had the non-touchbar option completely removed although the physical escape key is now back. It seems we still have the fudge that, Siamese style, sees the top case, battery and keyboard difficult to fix independently of each other. An expensive out of warranty repair is a possibility as a result.
It can be argued that, in 2019 (at the gates of 2020), we are better suited to a USB-C only future but it is clear we aren't their yet. HDMI and ethernet ports are still everywhere (as is that 'legacy' USB).
If people still feel (SpamSandwich for example) that having those ports around a little longer would be better in their opinion, it's a perfectly valid opinion. It's clear to me that Mike's comments were not an insult so I put that down to a simple misinterpretation.
I said it in 2016 when there were rumours of stealth bomber and fighter analogies doing the rounds about debate within Apple on the 'thin at all costs' line against a fatter MBP, and I'll say it again. There was likely not universal acceptance of port approval at Apple and the keyboard switch, ESC key, TouchBar decisions were probably not universally accepted either.
There will be differing opinions on these areas. That shouldn't surprise anyone but they are opinions. All valid.
Okay, so the verdict is in. After 90+ comments the new MBP is a big piece of shit that no “pro” would ever buy because... ports. Right, got it.
It's just comical the rants coming from these haters. I wonder if those complaining about the lack of an HDMI port are millennials, or younger. I started with 8" floppy drives so I remember all those legacy devices and ports eventually disappear in the name of change, to where we are now with USBc. It's like the same, tired arguments from back then had somehow been regurgitated. They are either too young to remember those years of change, or if their on the older side like me, they are just steadfast in their stubbornness to accept anything else but the status quo.
Just because there are tons of external displays that use HDMI doesn't mean that computer makers should continue including what is essentially a dead standard in their products. It's no one's fault. Tech progresses, but the old tech still stays around for a while. The great thing about USBc (and Thunderbolt3) is that one can still get something that allows use of legacy tech.
So grow up people. I am absolutely happy with a USBc/TB3 setup on my MBP. If I need to plug my laptop into a clunky HDMI screen/projector, I'll get an adapter for those rare times. I don't an essentially dead port for 99.9% of the time to take up any space on my laptop.
Take your whining elsewhere. It's just really sad to see these people complaining about obsolete ports, especially that one poster wanting a VGA port.
We'll see if it still has the keyboard/battery/ top case melded together design like the previous generations but in the EU it starts at 2,699€ and quickly blasts past 3,000€.
PS: what the heck are ' force-cancelling woofers'?
Marketing lingo for “we decided to use six 4 cent greeting card quality speakers to accommodate the design and needed to make this deficiency sound cool”.
In other words - the sound will be garbage as they couldn’t put in a decent sized speaker cone physically capable of producing sound waves - so jammed in 6 small deficient ones and using harmonic algorithms to give the impression of full sound through volume.
In in other words, it will sound like a louder iPhone.
A keyboard reboot we all saw coming. Here’s one I did not: the new 16-inch MacBook Pro has radically improved built-in speakers. This is the audio equivalent of going from chunky pixels to retina displays. It’s that big a difference.
It’s not simply about being louder, although they are louder at maximum volume. They just sound impossibly better. They don’t merely sound like good laptop speakers — they sound like good dedicated portable speakers, period. In a small room, you can credibly use the 16-inch MacBook Pro to play music as though it’s an entertainment speaker system. And at maximum volume they really are a lot louder — without the sort of distortion we’ve all come to expect from laptop speakers at high volume.
No listing of all the ports and connectors? THAT is what separates a pro computer from the incapable POS’ we’ve been getting called MacBook Pro.
UPDATE: Four Thunderbolt 3 ports. That’s all. Good lord... from their web site:
” MacBook Pro is equipped with four ports, so you can do all of that from either side. Existing devices are easily connected with a cable or adapter. And Thunderbolt 3 is reversible, so no matter how you plug in, it’s always right side up.”
It’ll still be a massive shitpile of adapters on a regular desk. Hate this mentality of theirs. Is it really asking for too much to expect some actual USB, Ethernet or other kinds of ports to REDUCE the number of adapters?
It has USB. USB-C is the latest iteration of USB. You don’t need adapters, you just need the proper cables for your devices. Do you understand that? Cables. Plenty of A-to-C cables.
Are you honestly asking for an ethernet port!?
I give at lot of customer presentations and they all, without exception, give me a HDMI cable for the big screen in the meeting room. So it is not the proper cable that is the issue but the proper port on my laptop. And don't make me "educate" my customers.
Sounds like you have a special use case. Not typical for the typical pro customer, which Apple’s Craig has said is software development. So no harm in asking you to use an adapter to support your special use case of “presentations where I can’t use my own cable”. Good thing they exist, right? But still no reason to add single-use extra ports to every single customer for your specific use case.
Comments
In other words - the sound will be garbage as they couldn’t put in a decent sized speaker cone physically capable of producing sound waves - so jammed in 6 small deficient ones and using harmonic algorithms to give the impression of full sound through volume.
In in other words, it will sound like a louder iPhone.
In every table are retractable HDMI/Ethernet cords.
Also just sitting on every table are little keychains with 3 adapters:
1 is iPhone to HDMI (plus a USB-C-looking shape on the output side [not sure if this can be an input; doubt it]).
The other two I might not know the names:
Mini-DisplayPort? The one that fits my 2009 MacBook: Really small fat-rectangle, with two tiny corner-cuts.
Display Port? The one that looks like HDMI at first glance, but has a significant corner-cut on only one side.
Oops, I see the coming-reaction here. "None are USB-C shape to HDMI". That's true actually.
YMMV.
Now all of the Apple sycophants will go on and on about ‘just buy an adapter’ and ‘be prepared’ and how it’s obviously your fault for not having the right equipment with, and I assume that none of these people have ever forgotten anything or had an adapter break or have someone borrow it and not return it, etc. Nor have they had an adapter not work properly. The fact of the matter is, rather than have a couple of the most common ports available to people, Apple made a decision that ‘we can make USB C do everything’ and, user convenience be damned, they can go out and buy all the ports cables and docks and hubs.
As for “cables vs adapters” - that’s a completely semantic argument and ignores the point.
You should be equally thrilled with how the level of taxation impacts the price of Apple products there.
Going to 512GB as the base level SSD is good, I've been struggling with 256GB since 2016, and it's just not enough for me, apparently.
As for TB3, get over it. They're not going to add in a bunch of single use ports just to make you happy. If, after 3 years, you're still upset about it, go have a long, hard look at yourself in the mirror. Let's face it the argument that "I don't want to buy this new computer because I'd have to buy some new cables as well" gets weaker over time.
What about the users who want this laptop, with 4 USB-C ports, and never ever want to do a presentation? Never in need of HDMI?
See Phil's take on ports:
“Do you think there’s ever a chance that the SD card slot makes a comeback?”
Schiller replied:
At that time I said wholesale switch was unnecessary. That doesn't mean staying anchored in the past or closing my eyes to the future, it means moving with the times and transitioning in the true sense of the word.
Ethernet, HDMI, USB. No fuss. Simple.
Apple chose the non-simple (for the user) option of making people buy cables, adaptors or docks, and back then they were expensive.
Many competitors who went down similar paths actually put docks in the box. Problem solved.
People tried to defend Apple's decision by throwing that 'legacy' term around only to have Apple include all those legacy ports on the iMac from the following year! Where they remain to this day. More than three years later.
Since that 2016 machine (and the design decisions that came with it) we have learnt a lot and many of us were borne out in what we said at the time.
We've been through the USB-C/Thunderbolt cabling nightmare (great care is still required when choosing cables). We've got Apple repair programmes that cover almost every butterfly keyboard ever made, culminating in a switch back to a scissor mechanism. We've had the non-touchbar option completely removed although the physical escape key is now back. It seems we still have the fudge that, Siamese style, sees the top case, battery and keyboard difficult to fix independently of each other. An expensive out of warranty repair is a possibility as a result.
It can be argued that, in 2019 (at the gates of 2020), we are better suited to a USB-C only future but it is clear we aren't their yet. HDMI and ethernet ports are still everywhere (as is that 'legacy' USB).
If people still feel (SpamSandwich for example) that having those ports around a little longer would be better in their opinion, it's a perfectly valid opinion. It's clear to me that Mike's comments were not an insult so I put that down to a simple misinterpretation.
I said it in 2016 when there were rumours of stealth bomber and fighter analogies doing the rounds about debate within Apple on the 'thin at all costs' line against a fatter MBP, and I'll say it again. There was likely not universal acceptance of port approval at Apple and the keyboard switch, ESC key, TouchBar decisions were probably not universally accepted either.
There will be differing opinions on these areas. That shouldn't surprise anyone but they are opinions. All valid.
Just because there are tons of external displays that use HDMI doesn't mean that computer makers should continue including what is essentially a dead standard in their products. It's no one's fault. Tech progresses, but the old tech still stays around for a while. The great thing about USBc (and Thunderbolt3) is that one can still get something that allows use of legacy tech.
https://daringfireball.net/2019/11/16-inch_macbook_pro_first_impressions
AUDIO
A keyboard reboot we all saw coming. Here’s one I did not: the new 16-inch MacBook Pro has radically improved built-in speakers. This is the audio equivalent of going from chunky pixels to retina displays. It’s that big a difference.
It’s not simply about being louder, although they are louder at maximum volume. They just sound impossibly better. They don’t merely sound like good laptop speakers — they sound like good dedicated portable speakers, period. In a small room, you can credibly use the 16-inch MacBook Pro to play music as though it’s an entertainment speaker system. And at maximum volume they really are a lot louder — without the sort of distortion we’ve all come to expect from laptop speakers at high volume.
Sounds like you have a special use case. Not typical for the typical pro customer, which Apple’s Craig has said is software development. So no harm in asking you to use an adapter to support your special use case of “presentations where I can’t use my own cable”. Good thing they exist, right? But still no reason to add single-use extra ports to every single customer for your specific use case.