Mac Just Works, but Could We Have Some Ports Back?

I'm not a fan of Apple's "death to all ports" approach

This could be seen as a follow-on from my post a few months back on how Mac Just Works, Except When It Doesn’t. I hope this will this not become a recurring series, as I’m a long-time, mostly happy, Mac user. I’ve been using iMacs as my home PC for many years now and again the experience has been mostly great and there are plenty of things I love about the iMac.

But … here’s another thing that is more than a little frustrating with the latest iMac: there is a real scarcity of ports to use for essential add-on devices. There’s even one essential - and typically built-in as standard - port that is missing, AWOL. Here’s a little detail around my frustration:

• The missing port is a network port, to provide wired network access - which accounts for the small white USB-C adapter on the left of the image at the top of this post. I have to use one of the USB-C ports just to have wired network connectivity. This just feels crazy to me on a premium desktop PC. When I got the iMac out of its box and setup, I honestly thought I was missing something - some magical, elegant Apple hidden compartment for the network cable. I even called Apple Support, who offered the opinion that network ports are not needed because wireless is so fast/great these days. I disagree. I’ll take a wired connection always, for speed, contention, and security reasons.

• There are four ports total, of any kind, on the iMac. Again, that feels at the least strange, and a little crazy.

• While USB-C is very much the standard on mobile devices, I don’t think we can say the same for desktop computers. I think there are still a number of needed uses cases for USB-A devices and ports.

• The result is that if you want or need to connect USB-A devices - a mouse, keyboard, USB drive etc - you need to look for USB hubs and adapters to provide that capability. And, in my experience this is also frustrating.

• I bought a USB hub almost immediately after unboxing the iMac. Not just any USB hub, a verified Mac compatible hub via a Mac specific retailer. That’s the Satechi device in the photo above. It worked for around a year, and then the iMac began showing an error message stating that a USB device was using too much power and all USB devices are disabled while this is the case. A call to Apple Support confirmed that the device I had is Mac compatible, but they advised that I need a USB hub that is AC powered - which took almost a year to become a problem on my iMac. That made my USM mouse unusable and left me where I could not even attempt to connect a bluetooth mouse because even Apple Support could not suggest a way to navigate around the UI to do the needed pairing.

• Finding the right AC powered hub to make it possible to use a few “old school/still in use school” USB devices work is not a two minute exercise either, as articles like this one illustrate: https://www.macworld.com/article/229045/thunderbolt-3-adapter-m1-imac-macbook-pro-mac-mini-usb-displayport-hdmi-ethernet.html

Maybe it’s just me, but none of the above feels like “it’s just working”.