Am I the only one who feels this way:
The "issue" isn't so much Apple's potentially removing a once-provided "free" adapter (which, so very iRonically was in response to their removing the headphone jack...), nor others' "insensitivity" to the needs/preferences of some.
You are not the only one who feels this way, but I do feel that your sentiment, while perhaps representative of a growing group of disgruntled users here, isn't really representative of Apple's user base in general.
And yelling at one another here isn't really helping your case. You might draw a few like-minded people to your case, but you will also alienate everyone else who doesn't share your sentiments.
Rather, those are just "one-straw-too-many" beyond the main issue of simply too much accumulated fatigue by customers having to adjust via both their mindset and wallets every 6-12 months to accommodate
Apple's 5-year waterfall of removing, reducing, and changing user interface items (both software & hardware) as if those UI items were "optional features" instead of "optimized, mature standards pretty well-integrated into the world outside of Apple." It's been a death-by-thousand-paper-cuts-while-sitting-in-slowly-boiling-water as customers are required to do "more" to counter the "less" as Apple removes/reduces ports, jacks, home buttons, pixels, protective-case-friendly bezels, component upgradeability, UI details & affordances, function keys, and Magsafe in favor of sleeker, thinner, lighter. Further iRonically, any reduced size & weight is merely shifted into the new headphones, new adapters, new dongles, new y-splitters, new usb hubs, new magsafe-like usb-c adapters, new JetDrive Lites, etc., etc., etc., purchased by customers in order to regain the functions & conveniences that were largely built-in to Apple hardware just a few years prior. Then, even further iRonically, many of those items must be stored and toted around along with their "more portable" (????) iPhone or MacBook. (Re-read those last two sentences for a convenient lesson in Conservation of Mass).
To me, that has always been the caveat for using Apple products. They offer you an optimised way of getting things done, but the catch is that you have to do it their way. If the manner in which Apple implemented a certain feature so happens to be in line with how you intend to get things done, it's "magical". If it's the direct opposite, then it's like jogging through quicksand - you will die a slow and painful death.
For me, I generally don't have an issue with how Apple has traditionally done things, and I also use all the issues you have listed as an opportunity to re-examine the way I do things and see how I can further evolve my own workflows.
If anything, that's what I am already doing with my iPad Pro. When I first got my 2012 iPad 3, I saw its potential despite its myriad of flaws and shortcomings, and so I set out to eliminate those limitations one by one. No file manager? Dropbox + Documents. Use Workflow to automate away the friction in certain tasks. Use airdrop to pass files around. The port is used either for charging or the VGA adaptor (and I have an Apple TV for mirroring in another class). Wireless connectivity with 4G.
The end result is that for many tasks, I can actually be more efficient on my iPad compared to a conventional PC. I can't go and address every one of the points you just listed, but in general, my solution is to simply not fight what Apple is trying to do, and I find that one generally comes out better for it. I bought the Apple Watch, and it's a great accessory to my iPhone. I got the AirPods, and it's the only pair of headphones I ever use these days. People laugh at the charging method of the Apple Pencil; it's the only way I ever charge my pencil since the day I bought it.
Sometimes, I look at all these criticisms and wonder what it is that I am doing wrong (or right) for me to not have experienced any of these issues.
But that's just me. I suppose I am fortunate in that the direction in which Apple seems to be headed in so happens to be in line with what I want out of my devices.
Compounding this: 1) Apple's seeming indifference to resulting negative trade-offs to many in this quest to find the next floppy drive, spinning HD, or serial port to remove. Do you enjoy touch ID's convenience of finding a tactile button for unlocking without having to face or even see the phone? Too bad, hello Face ID (more work than before to do the same act). Enjoy having to hunt/guess/click/swipe more to access tucked-away-functions that were previously intuitively identified out in the open and enacted via just one tap before? iOS 7-11 is pretty great for you then, even with it's often requiring more work than before to do the same acts. 2) Apple's history of relatively limited line-up across products which could at least offer some hardware flexibility for users less interested in the skinniest device. Want a mobile Apple device optimized for durability & the field w/o carrying adapters? Just buy a case & more adapters. 3) Apple's frequent Apple-centric thinking regarding cables/ports/devices which further tasks the customer with segmentation across their accumulating interface hardware. No headphone jack? Buy AirPods that work only with your Apple products and don't assist with integrating into your inventory of other still-valuable often-expensive non-Apple hardware into a no-headphone-jack world.
The way I see it, the problem here is that many people are over-emphasising the short-term drawbacks associated with the moves that Apple has made, while completely undervaluing their long-term ramifications.
Remember when Apple blocked flash on iOS and many people cried murder? In the short run, users were inconvenienced because they couldn't access flash content on their iPads. In the long run, we benefited from native apps in a thriving App Store, and websites better designed for mobile.
I am not saying the loss of the home button, or the headphone jack, or traditional ports or having to use adaptors doesn't suck. I am simply saying that it will all be worth it in the end. I think the whole issue here is our general inability / unwillingness to look beyond our own short-term interests. Yes, we can see the potential that USB-C holds, but clearly nobody wants to be one to have to give up their USB-A peripherals or spend extra on adaptors.
The lesson Apple keeps teaching and others keep ignoring is - to create true meaningful change in a market you need to force change. By taking bold unapologetic stances. Here’s a touchscreen smart phone without the familiarity of a physical Qwerty keyboard. Here’s a large screen tablet without a desktop OS and desktop apps and file system. Here’s a smart phone without a headphone jack. Here's a laptop with only USB-C ports.
In my opinion, Apple hasn't changed, in that I fully expect Apple to pull this sort of stunt from time to time, and personally, I quite welcome it. The problem here is that their users haven't changed either. They bought into Apple at a certain frame of time and they somehow expect Apple to just keep making and supporting the same old product forever.
At this point, maybe the current Apple is no longer the same Apple you knew back then, and perhaps breaking up is the most correct thing you can do, rather than continue to languish in a failing relationship and grow more and more bitter and resentful with each passing day.
It's well understood that Apple's credo is to not cower to, I mean, cater to customer preferences, instead challenging the customer to summon the courage to change their world to match Apple's ideal world. But Apple's shifting its focus noticeably 5 years ago away from a finely-tuned balance of functionality, flexibility, utility, durability, and even fun-factor and instead towards focusing on thinness, lightness, sleekness, unobtrusiveness, symmetry, and fashion-first over function is dangerously simmering into becoming an evil caricature of Change for the sake of Change. How much is left to remove with this "less is more" mentality? Backspace buttons? Sent Items Folders in iMail? What bigger example is there of Apple's thinking "less is more" than the silly commercial where the supposedly technologically-savvy girl supposedly does all per productivity work on a tablet and has not a clue what a computer is? Good luck to her if she becomes an engineer one day and tries designing & developing the world's next iPod, iPhone, or iPad using an iPad.
And that's your rebuttal? That the girl is screwed if she ever has to interview for a job which she might not even have an interest in?
Not everyone needs a PC in the first place. If I were a chef, or a construction worker, or one of so many vocations which doesn't involve interacting with a computer in any way, is it such a big deal that I have no idea what a PC is? Say the iPad meets my needs just fine. I return home from work, chill on the couch, and the iPad can meet all my light productivity, entertainment and social media needs, why are you so insistent that I use a PC if it's not the right tool for the job?
Apple is all about making technology more personal, and personally as a fan of the iPad Pro, if Apple does ever intend to usher in a new world order where the iPad is the default PC of choice for the general consumer and it meets their needs so well that they have absolute zero need of a conventional PC, I will be there at the frontlines cheering Apple on.
The Macs will still be there for the engineers, the coders, the app developers, the scientists. But I fail to see what the general populace has to lose from not using a device that never really met their needs to begin with.
Worse is that most all 3rd party developers and even competitors blindly follow Apple's design-vision lead for better or worse...
I could probably live with the headphone jack removal if my iPhone's UI still felt intuitive and magical, and if post-Mavericks OSX didn't look distractingly like Fisher Price's My First Computer, and if the MacBook Pro had a pro-level selection of ports, and if the only option to upgrade my MacBook Air's 8GB ram wasn't to buy a whole new laptop, and if my iPhone's durability to withstand weekly drops wasn't based on a photogenic crystal teacup.
Anyone else feel the bigger issue is the removal of more and more and more to where each new removal is just painful?
I think the real issue here is that in a bid to serve a newer generation of consumers, Apple has changed in keeping with the times and the consequence is that they have left their old user base behind. And this older user base has little incentive to change, for reasons which remain their own, and now they are frightened.
History has shown that you cannot usher in a new world order without first doing away with the current one. It is not a genuine state of concern for Apple's future, or the well-being of us consumers that has you making this giant post that you did. It is fear, plain and simple.
From the perspective of someone whose work cannot be done on an iPad, there is a growing observation that apple's existing lineup of computers is either going extinct (Mac mini, tower Mac Pro, Airport) or evolving in a manner which they don't care for (eg: thinner, loss of legacy ports, crappy keyboard, touchbar displacing function keys). Not to mention that macOS no longer seems the stable, hassle-free OS it was once renowned for.
Apple seems to have little motivation in continuing to invest in the Mac and its future is honestly quite uncertain. As such, this makes people like you extremely sensitive to catchphrases such as "What's a computer" because it just reinforces your own observations - that Apple no longer seems passionate about the Mac and they might soon be faced with a grim future of either being saddled with a Mac which doesn't meet their needs, or turn to a Windows computer.
You are scared. You don't want to move to Windows or Linux but at the rate at which things are headed, you just might wake up one day and finding that this has become a reality.
I can empathise with that. I have no answer for you, because I am in the iPad camp, and all I can give you is a virtual hug and genuinely wish you all the best. Come what may from Apple.
