Agreed, checked this one out at the local Apple store and it really irks me when Apple kills port after port.I never liked that laptop.
(So, yes that MacBook is not for me nor will I recommend it to anybody)
What they do not get is that for many many years there still will be peripherals around that one has to connect to.
The world is not totally wireless (yet) and the point of a small laptop computer is that you can take it and use it anywhere where one finds USB cabled printers, scanners etc..
PS: I have no horse in any copying race, so doesn't matter who copies whom , as log as we get good products. Eventually all technologies converge just because it's possible.