I got myself a Mac for learning SwiftUi because I want to make an iPhone game. I got myself a used 16/256 M1 Air model that has 2 USB-C ports and that’s it.
This made me create a workstation, where I have a high quality Thunderbolt 3 dock that works with DisplayLink, so I can have up to 4 external displays on windows and 3 on my MacBook Air. On this dock, I have connected 2 monitors, a mouse, a keyboard, a webcam, still have some USB A and C ports free to use. Best thing is that this dock has a micro SD and a regular SD slot!
All this through a single USB-C cable!
I want to connect my work HP Probook to this setup? Just plug the USB-C cable in and all comes to life!
I want to connect my gaming-PC? Just plug the USB-C cable in the Thunderbolt slot of the Graphics card and all comes to life!
Oh, I want to connect my USB-C emulator console, iPad, Tablet, etc. to the monitor, or the USB-stick? Or the Ethernet ? Just plug it in!
Basically I got my single cable workstation, and all that because of Apple removing useful at-home-things from a on-the-go device
Yeah until a peripheral is having weird issues that magically goes away only when you plug in directly to the computer.
Or the dock randomly decides it doesn’t like one specific computer anymore and falls back to being a USB3 hub. Thunderbolt docks are really cool but I’ve had tons of reliability issues with them over the years.
I still use one but it’s been relieved from display duty because it didn’t always play nice.