Maybe consider that it’s more nuanced in real life.
That $12 card reader, even expensive USB-3 card readers, are often a lot slower than that builtin one. They get lost and broken, not even considering that when you’re on the go, many photographers will absolutely try to shed as much unnecessary weight as possible, as not many people are built like the hulk or have an entourage of assistants doing the heavy lifting.
I use my laptop a lot outside of an office, and having that multitude of builtin ports is an absolute must, as dongles are quite difficult to deal with in situations when I don’t have a flat surface to put the laptop on. That TB/Ethernet dongle I regularly do have to use has been a great source of frustration.
I bought a new MacBook Air last year, and a USB A/C adapter with it. I somehow lost the adapter. Bought another one. Then bought a dual A/C USB thumb drive. I'm getting along, but would appreciate at least one USB-A port.
I am also a photographer, and miss the SD port. But I realize that's kinda niche, and can understand it going away. I wouldn't be surprised to see cameras move away from SD cards eventually anyway.
The speed of the SD is far more limiting than the speed of the card reader itself, even for USB2.0.
As for whether I consider the nuances of "real life," I traveled by land across several countries with a DSLR, and took hundreds of photos a week. My DSLR has a CF slot and an SD slot; I used the SD slot for a wifi chip, and saved all photos to CF. My CF reader hasn't gotten lost or broken, and I didn't have "an entourage of assistants doing the heavy lifting" (whatever that means when talking about a card reader).
In real life, you can just use an external card reader. It's not a big limitation, just like it's not a big limitation that laptops these days don't have optical drives.
USB 2.0 tops out at a theoretical 60MB/s, and in reality it is much slower, far below the read speeds of fast SD cards.
I appreciate that it’s good enough under some circumstances, but not always. Certainly not when taking several cards worth of photos a day, with only very limited time to do transfer, selection, and editing.
That $12 card reader, even expensive USB-3 card readers, are often a lot slower than that builtin one. They get lost and broken, not even considering that when you’re on the go, many photographers will absolutely try to shed as much unnecessary weight as possible, as not many people are built like the hulk or have an entourage of assistants doing the heavy lifting.
I use my laptop a lot outside of an office, and having that multitude of builtin ports is an absolute must, as dongles are quite difficult to deal with in situations when I don’t have a flat surface to put the laptop on. That TB/Ethernet dongle I regularly do have to use has been a great source of frustration.
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