It has to do with a segment of professional users like myself. I don't buy macbooks because I'm trying to push the industry in any particular direction, I buy them because I enjoy working with them and the one's I've had have been exceptional tools for what I do. The keyboards type fast, the trackpad is second to none, and the performance is always good... But see the problem is, and this is why I'm typing this on a mid-2015 macbook pro, for the last 5-6 years, there's been no MBPs that hit all the sweet spots for me or users like me going by some other comments here.
I want a system I can take into a client's place, and be ready to hook up to whatever current equipment they have for me to plug into. I hate using dongles, I hate saying the word "dongle", because they clutter things up and they're too easy to forget. When you show up at a client's place, and can't even connect to their industry standard equipment because a family member swiped a dongle/special cable or you just plain forgot it, that looks bad on you. That's a ding on your professional rep with that client. It's not a major thing by itself, but little things like that can add up to big things, and project an unflattering image of you professionally.
At the price point of a macbook pro, I shouldn't have to remember a bunch of small crap to carry with me and have a system that, once it's setup to do my work at a client's site, looks like a modern industrial art homage to the Flying Spaghetti Monster(may all be blessed by His noodlely appendages). My mind is already more than occupied on the projects I'm involved in and my family. I shouldn't need to have to buy extra stuff to get basic connectivity to industry standard equipment done. It still remains annoying to me that there's no built in ethernet port, but thankfully, I don't have to worry about carrying around a card reader or a special usb-c to hdmi cable at least with these new ones, so that's two less things I'll have to worry about over the course of work in the coming years. That's important to me and anyone else like me, who already has to tow around a bunch of things as it is. The less I have to think about little things like that, the more at ease I am in my work day. The less cluttered my system actually looks when it's setup for work, the less noise in my peripheral when I'm trying to get work done.
All that "simplification" ignored what the systems actually looked like when they were setup for actual work by many pros, which was really noisy and the opposite of clean and simple.
