USB-C is the future? Tell that to the people who bought MacBooks in 2015 with only a single USB-C port. They now have 3 year old machines with this port that is still "the future" and all they have to show for it is a pile of dongles to use this port that will be the one true port of the future. In a couple years when they retire their machines they can be proud of their forward-thinking port even though they never connected anything to it without an adapter.
Other devices give you multiple ports including USB-C. And people who have the choice, are, so far, ignoring it (the evidence is the complete Mojave Desert full of native USB-C hardware on the market).
When new ports hit the market that actually are the future, they come out on computers along side legacy ports to ease the transition and people switch to the new port over a few years because it is just flat-out better.
USB-C has been the only port Apple gives you for 3 years, and the user-base still does not exist for it.
And to prove what a steaming turd even Apple knows USB-C really is, you can't even plug the latest iPhones into a USB-C only mac without an adapter.
Plenty of "better" connections have failed over the years. microchannel was far better than ISA, and yet it flopped miserably while ISA lived a couple of years longer before something came to replace it. SCSI never hit mainstream beyond high-end servers despite being better than anything else on the market. OS/2 was absolutely better than Windows, we know how that one turned out. The list is endless.
And USB-C has gained zero traction in 3 years. 3 years ago, it was very common on PC motherboards, now it's become much more rare and is fading away. USB-C has had it's run, it is a flop, and much like MCA and SCSI, it will sort of float around a minor fringe for a couple more years until the equivalent of EISA and SATA come along to be the real "future" and you won't need a company trying to force it. It will happen fast and naturally before you even realize it's here. That describes the entire history of computing.
And where Apple as screwed up big-time is making this piece of road-kill at the side of the information highway the only port on their macs.
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Oh, please, that game has been going on on this forum for ages. I find a machine that performance-wise will beat the MBP at under $500 plus have socketed ram, 2.5" drive bay, etc. And you will complain it's not as thin, not the same build quality (which is BS), shorter battery life, etc. While I say it's better because it has a proper keyboard.
I'm not playing that game, just look at your best buy flyer and you'll see plenty of laptops at the price point that would do the job if you would have an open mind and not play semantic games.
Your post reads like a novel from an alternate universe.
I have a 2016 MacBook Pro and I have one dongle, the Apple TB3 to TB2 adapter. The rest of my stuff uses USB-C to <port X> cables.
I have a Transcend Card Reader that uses a USB 3.0 Micro-B to to USB-C cable that I can also use to hook up any USB 3.0 hard drive that isn't hobbled by a permanently attached cable.
I have a USB 2.0 Mini-B to USB-C for any device that still uses that ancient connector (Zoom H6 recorder)
I have a USB 2.0 Micro-B to USB-C cable for any device that use that connector (Zoom H1, Kindle, Android Phone, et al.)
I have a USB 2.0 Type B to USB-C to hook up any device that uses that connector (printer, USB audio interface like a Scarlet 2i4)
Other devices, in this instance, lets say an average laptop PC, give me truly useless ports like VGA, which I haven't used in 10+ years and still holds back most PC OEMs from making thinner, smaller, lighter, more useful laptops because they are still beholden to users who won't let VGA go despite the need for it to be retired 10 years ago.
Apple doesn't do legacy ports, otherwise we would not have had the 2012 Retina MacBook Pro everyone on the MacRumors forums seem to revere so much, because Apple jettisoned both the FireWire 800 and RJ45 ethernet port as well as the DVD-ROM drive in order to make the computer thinner. The howls were loud and intense.
I plug my iPhone 6s into my 2016 MacBook Pro with an Apple USB-C to Lightning cable that I bought to charge my iPad Pro, no adapter needed. Apple includes the USB Type-A to Lightning cable as default because they at least acknowledge that the rest of the world is still stuck in USB Type-A Land.
MicroChannel failed because IBM was trying to recapture a market that they had already lost as lower cost clones had become too big a market to overcome or litigate out of existence. Faced with invevitability,that didn't stop the IBM suits from trying to take control back of the product they "invented". OS/2 failed for the very same reason as most people were on to IBM by then and no amount of M*A*S*H nostalgia was going to get them back.
EISA partially failed and it WAS compatible with ISA. PCI succeeded mightily and superseded them both because it was far superior, yet it had ZERO backwards compatiblity hardware-wise. Yes, PCI and ISA coexisted for years, much to the chagrin of IT people everywhere who had to deal with PoS ISA cards because someone was too cheap to replace a damn Token Ring network with Ethernet. No one in my peer group pines for ISA or IDE, or even SCSI for that matter.
AGP lost out completely to PCI Express even though PCIe was not backwards compatible with AGP. AGP simply disappeared so fast no one ever missed it or waxed poetic over it. No one tried to smooth that transition over for users who now had to buy new video cards, hardly a cheap proposition.
Not sure where you get your news, but USB-C is on almost all Asus, Gigabyte, ASRock and MSI motherboards, even many lower end models. It is not fading away in the least. On the flip side, Intel-based Thunderbolt 3 started very strong on the Z170 platform (especially Gigabyte, who had 5 Z170 boards with TB3 onboard), but hit a wall with the Z270 and Z370 platforms and has been mostly relegated to a few X299 motherboards. Meanwhile ASMedia now dominates the USB-C controller market with PC Motherboard OEMs and is nearly ubiquitous.
Thunderbolt 1 and 2 never gained traction on the PC side, neither did FireWire despite Sony pushing it hard. USB-C is gaining traction RAPIDLY but, sadly, Thunderbolt 3 probably will not.
USB-C has just started its run and is most certainly not a flop - you are living in the Upside Down. I have been buying computers since 1989 and there has never been a new port or standard that didn't meet with resistance, but instead just happened "fast and naturally", more like kicking and screaming! The initial reception to USB when it was introduced was frosty, to say the least, on the PC side. Then Apple introduced the iMac - and USB took off - all the while Mac people complained bitterly about the lack of SCSI, ADB, AppleTalk (Serial), DB15 (Video) and a floppy drive.
You are not going to buy a $500 laptop that will beat the MacBook Pro, period. You can find a few decent gems at that price point, but you are going to spend serious coin to buy an equivalent to the 2018 MacBook Pro. I have worked on $500 laptops and you truly do get what you pay for most of the time.
Soldered RAM is a pain, I admit, but I have bought quality DRAM DIMMs to go into systems that the MFR claimed up and down were the correct part and have still had major headaches. I have spent hours researching why the DIMMs were causing kernel panics and purchased entirely new DIMMS from different MFRs that listed bulletproof compatibility that still gave me issues. PLEASE, unless you can afford a $3K DIMM tester, it is still a crapshoot. Do I want removable RAM on the mini, iMac and Mac Pros, sure. But on Apple portables, it is simply one less thing for me to worry about.
Yes, Apple's flash storage is hella expensive, but it is the bar that all other mobile computers are judged by. Most PC vendors give you a 128GB NVMe SSD and a 1TB HDD and think they are riding the lightning, but it's just another band-aid, because price ultimately dominates the PC industry and they are simply piecing parts together versus trying to build an integrated whole. And if that 1TB HDD lasts more than a year without biting the dust it will be a miracle.
There are a few standout gems in the PC notebook world, some probably have great keyboards too, but there is nothing improper about Apple's keyboard. You either like it or you don't. I like it, not as much as my Magic Keyboard, but it's better than the previous MBPs slightly wobbly and mushy keyboard.
Apple makes the best TrackPad, bar none. Even PC people will reluctantly admit this. Most PC trackpads are more akin to "Postage Stamp with Mushy Buttons Punishment", than an actual navigation aid.
I look at the Best Buy flyer every week and I see good and I see bad, but I don't see enough to make me go, "OOOOH, I gotta get me one of those!" I mostly go, meh, not too shabby if I needed it in a pinch. YMMV.
