OWC Takes $130 Off Popular 14-Port Thunderbolt Dock During Back To School Sale

[Donkey Man]

I've got one of these docks. I don't recommend it. I've got it connected to a M2 Mac Mini, and every time the Mini is rebooted you have to unplug and re-plug the dock before anything connected to it will be recognized. That seems like pretty core functionality.

It also doesn't do much for you with its Thunderbolt connectivity; the Ethernet port, for instance, is a USB-based port, not a PCIe-based one that leverages Thunderbolt.

You can do much better than this dock.

Indeed - OWC docks are notorious for disconnecting after waking from sleep, or failing to power all connected devices despite the latter being within the advertised power threshold.
Absolute nice-looking garbage.

 

[akbarali.ch]

Well, this is a (relatively) old Thunderbolt-3 style dock. Thunderbolt 4/5 docks typically have 2-3 downstream Thunderbolt ports.

Ultimately though - USB-A ports are cheaper to implement - both in terms of cost and i/o & power resources - than full-featured USB-C ports with support for video, USB3.2x2 and higher power delivery. Even more so c.f. USB4/Thunderbolt ports (&. multiple downstream TB ports weren't even possible until USB4/TB4). I suspect that even a minimal USB 3.2x1-only USB-C port is more expensive that USB A - and doesn't offer any performance advantage over USB-A. So it comes down to who gets to use a dongle...

As for demand, your mileage may vary. The only things I have that needs USB-C are my TB hub and USB-C displays... (and even the displays are debatable since they'd work perfectly well with DisplayPort, and while they'd need a second USB cable to support the internal hub, that would then support USB 3 rather than being limited to USB 2). I think I've maybe got one SSD that supports USB 3.2g2x2, but Mac doesn't support that mode anyhow. The USB A ports on my Caldigit hub support 10Gbps, though. Aside from that, many of my peripherals are USB 2. Basically, while I could look for a multi-USB-C hub, and replace a lot of USB A-to-B/microB cables, there is zero incentive to do that.

I think Apple scored a bit of an own goal back in 2016 by prematurely going all-USB-C on the MBP rather than just upgrading the TB2/MiniDP ports and keeping the rest - it created a huge market for hubs/docks/multiport adapters that focussed on restoring the so-called 'legacy' ports.

True, but wont it be messy to have 2 different ports, either all be A or all be C. Thats my point. not the usb 2.0 or 3.0 or thunderbolt etc. one connector to rule them all so you dont have to carry different cable and adapter around,