This is good news for all those that buy a portable device and then want to chain it down and connect a million things to it. Hurray!!!
As opposed to those who just buy their Mac as a desk ornament?
The sensible solution
on the desk is a hub or dock that connects all of your junk via one cable, and charges at the same time, and USB-C really improves the options for this (once the teething troubles are sorted out). If, however, when you head out on the road, you have to take your dock with you, you're holding it wrong, so most people will need some adapters to cope with people handing them USB sticks etc.
Anybody who takes their MacBook to meetings or demonstrates their work to clients will need one or both or the AV adapters - because nobody can guarantee whether the meeting room projector will have VGA (most common), HDMI (cropping up occasionally now) or an Apple TV so you can stream (Flap. Oink). Handily, these will also give you a USB-A port. Since we've been carrying around VGA and HDMI dongles for most of this century, the result is no less convenient than before - the main annoyance is the price.
It's a start. Ideally we wouldn't need so many adapters to plug in daily use items.
Hopefully we won't need so many
adapters as such... as long as your stuff doesn't have captive cables, its mainly a case of buying
replacement cables - you can get USB-C to USB-A, USB-B, USB-micro B, DisplayPort (& HDMI on the way)
cables, and once you've got over having to pay for them, the result is just as neat as before. The adapters/dongles will be for things not covered by USB-C alt modes (like Ethernet and, because Intel are hopeless, Thunderbolt 1/2) or those annoying devices with captive cables (*cough* Apple 27" LED Cinema Display *cough*)..
Sorry, but if your not using wireless by now, i have no sympathy for you.
Ah. Another desk ornament type.
If you have the latest, top-end WiFi ac router,
and there aren't any walls 5GHz-unfriendly walls in the way,
and your neighbour isn't microwaving pop-tarts,
and you don't live next to 50 other WiFi users,
and the weather conditions are right,
and Apple have defied convention and written a reliable WiFi driver
and you don't work in an office where WiFi is verboten then, on a good day, you
might get the same bandwidth out of wireless as a 1Gig Ethernet cable. Or, just plug in a cable and be sure.... and wireless doesn't come
close to USB 3.1 or Thunderbolt for bandwidth.
Wow, saving Apple customers literally dozens of dollars. This is huge!
...actually, it does sweeten things somewhat - I'd need both AV adapters, a Lightning cable for my iPad, and maybe a couple of USB-C-to-A adapters for my "travel kit" so that's about 70 bucks off the bill. Maybe not that significant as part of a $3k laptop deal, but 70 bucks is 70 bucks.
Kudos: as well as a small sweetener to customers, this will also encourage them to get (hopefully) decent quality stuff from the Apple store and not cheap stuff that might
fry their Macs or just plain not work - which should also head off support calls to Apple. What goes around comes around.
Now, Apple, for your next trick get a better range of USB-C/TB3 stuff in the store: like usb-c to displayport, maybe a MiniDisplayPort AV adapter, some hubs & docks... you really shouldn't have released a USB-C only MBP without having a USB-C ecosystem ready to ship with it. Oh, and I still don't think chucking a USB-A dongle in with the Mac is gonna derail the uptake of USB-C ... and they're
still stiffing people by not putting a charge cable and extension lead in the box with the power adapter.