> Intel helped make this move possible, but it doesn’t manufacture laptops. Apple took the heat for “donglegate”.

And rightfully so. They took Intel's technology and told an unprepared and uninterested industry to switch or die. Naturally, very few manufacturers switched over and Apple's all-or-nothing strategy made more people mad than happy.

Having 4 lanes of Thunderbolt connectivity is awesome. It doesn't really fix the fact that none of them can easily connect to a wired keyboard or mouse.

> On the x86 desktop, usb-c is still surprisingly rare.

My motherboard only has one TB connector, everything else is type-A too. Most of the bandwidth is broken out over SATA or PCIe internally, and frankly I don't regret it one bit. 99% of my life, there is nothing plugged into that Thunderbolt port.