Now, I get it, I’m not convincing anyone here, this is not about congruency or rational thinking, this is about “I got a many years old wired mouse that I love to use so I want to impose decades old ports on everyone else’s computers”.
Why are you so fixated on when the USB-A port was introduced? What counts is when it fell out of use, which is "not yet"!
The reality is that devices with USB-A ports and cables are still being sold today - and many "USB C" devices only use USB 3.1 and won't lose anything by being in a USB-A socket - and if they weren't Mac-specific they'll probably come with a USB-A adapter in the box... You can keep saying "USB-A is obsolete" until you are blue in the face, but that won't make it true.
OK, if the new Mx Pro Mini was going to replace 4 TB4 and 2 USB A sockets, with 6 TB4 sockets, getting a few USB-C to A dongles for a desktop wouldn't be a huge issue. Except that's not what happens - sounds like we're going from 6 USB ports to 5 USB ports which is (does hard math) one less port to use for keyboards, mice, memory sticks, scanners, printers, audio interfaces, lava lamps and all but the most expensive external drives. ...and, probably, only 3-4 of those sockets will support TB4 and DisplayPort, the remainder will just be differently-shaped USB 3 ports.
During the whole conundrum on lightning ports (which I find still great, easier to plug/unplug and lighter than the considerably bulkier by comparison USB-C)
...a Lightning port only partially supports USB 3, can't support Thunderbolt/USB4 speeds, can't carry 4k@60Hz video, can't charge at 100W+ and
isn't rapidly becoming the industry standard for charging mobile devices (something that the rest of the mobile market has embraced and only Apple is whining about). Apple needed to switch to USB-C in the iPad Pro - and would probably have needed it on future iPhones if they're going to keep pushing them as video production devices.
USB-C's strong point is on mobile devices which
need a single, multi-purpose port because they don't have room for anything else. It makes far less sense on desktops and regular-sized laptops with space for proper ports, where forcing multiple, independent resources like USB, Thunderbolt, DisplayPort and power through a limited number of (complicated and expensive) 'universal' connectors creates a resource bottleneck and 'port rationing'.
Meanwhile, the
main area where people are moaning about Lightning is its use on the Magic Peripherals for Mac - Lightning isn't used anywhere else in the Mac ecosystem and, bizarrely, the rechargeable Magic peripherals with Lightning were introduced
in the same year that Apple began moving the Macs to USB-C... I mean, it's not a dealbreaker, but it is pretty silly.
Not only should everyone switch to USB C by now, those ports used for charging should also have enough power to power a laptop.
That power has to come from somewhere.
On the Mini, it would mean a larger, more expensive, hotter-running power supply which - if they really must make the new Mini AppleTV-sized - would probably mean an external power brick.
Can not happen since by EU law everything must support USB-C until the law is changed
Pretty sure the EU law only applies to
rechargeable devices (the clue is in the name: "Common
Charger Directive), so it is irrelevant to the Mac Mini. Nor does it apply to wireless charging.
It certainly doesn't mean that there can't be new types of port - as long as battery-powered devices can be charged by a USB-C port. However, at least USB-C was
designed as a multi-protocol "future proof" port, so it might last even longer than USB-A.
