The Mac Studios ports are a step back in all the right ways

The ports have won. After years of Apple’s USB-C experiments, the past few months have seen a decisive victory for the concept of “being able to plug things into your computer without a complicated array of dongles and adapters” — marked in particularly by the latest announcement of Apple’s new Mac Studio desktop.

Not only does the new Mac Studio pack six USB-C ports — four of them full-fledged Thunderbolt 4 on the entry-level model and all six featuring Thunderbolt 4 support on the $3,999 M1 Ultra model — there’s a UHS-II SD card slot, an HDMI port, an Ethernet port, a headphone jack, and two USB-A ports. It’s a glut of ports that manages to outclass even the best proper, standalone Thunderbolt docks (the current reigning champ, the...

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