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I think the SD card example encapsulates the issue perfectly. I'm pretty sure that in 2021 that is an _extreme_ niche use case. I feel like only extremely serious photographers and perhaps a particular slice of musicians use them. It makes absolutely no sense for them to have that built into the laptop. 99% of people who own Macbooks or whatever don't own an SD card dongle because they don't need it. However, and ext…
I use my notebook's SD card reader all the time. Cameras, ARM SBCs, 3D printers, random SD cards I find laying around... There's plenty of use cases for an SD card reader, I certainly use video out on my notebook much less.
More recently there's the PinePhone as well. It's not just expandable storage, you can boot off the SD and have all your OS and files there.
I would say I definitely use SD cards more than flash drives now.