

The interesting thing is the people who will care the most about this are professional users, who actually did require a machine with real expandability, to stuff full of the likes of SDI video IO cards (eg https://www.aja.com/products/kona-5).
If you ask those people, they’ll undoubtedly gladly tell you how much it sucked dealing with Thunderbolt-to-PCIe expansion cages during the “Trashcan” era in order to use their machine for their work.
While Thunderbolt’s throughput has certainly improved a bunch since then (80Gbps symmetrical or 120/40Gbps asymmetrical for TB5, vs 20Gbps for TB2 back in that era), latency and stability still frankly leave a lot to be desired versus a real PCIe slot.
For people who already perceive Apple devices as overpriced toy computers, their further alienating what was at one point their primary target audience - high-end professional users - will certainly seem like an odd choice.






Bold of you to assume you’re going to be the one to outlive a 90s printer.