They eat up a ridiculously large amount of physical space. Ports are cheap when space is cheap. Space is at a very high premium for laptops.
The port doesn't just magically disappear into the machine, it eats up that entire chunk of the laptop. Space which could be going to mainboard / speakers / hid / battery.
So modern laptops give you a very high bandwidth and low physical size bus (thunderbolt/usb-c) and a duplicate so you can charge at the same time and that's really all you need. Now I get the best laptop for the space the case takes up and the option to plug all that other stuff in is still there. The bus is plenty fast, you just need an adapter or dock.
I have a 4 usb-c port machine. I've never had all 4 ports in use at the same time. I have (just counting plugs on my hub) 9 usb devices and 2 4k monitors plugged into my machine. Switching them over from work to personal laptop is as simple as unplugging and replugging a usb-c cable. Feels fine to me.
I mean... objectively speaking here: yes.
They eat up a ridiculously large amount of physical space. Ports are cheap when space is cheap. Space is at a very high premium for laptops.
The port doesn't just magically disappear into the machine, it eats up that entire chunk of the laptop. Space which could be going to mainboard / speakers / hid / battery.
So modern laptops give you a very high bandwidth and low physical size bus (thunderbolt/usb-c) and a duplicate so you can charge at the same time and that's really all you need. Now I get the best laptop for the space the case takes up and the option to plug all that other stuff in is still there. The bus is plenty fast, you just need an adapter or dock.
I have a 4 usb-c port machine. I've never had all 4 ports in use at the same time. I have (just counting plugs on my hub) 9 usb devices and 2 4k monitors plugged into my machine. Switching them over from work to personal laptop is as simple as unplugging and replugging a usb-c cable. Feels fine to me.