They are! Unless you'd like it to be a USB A card occasionally. Or and SD reader. Or you would like to buy a laptop that lets you choose exactly what ports you want, with the power to change it any time.
I'm not a fan of having a such a large USB-C hub built into the laptop at all. This adapter shows the weird compromise where there is not enough space inside the laptop for a complicated adapter but a non-trivial amount of space inside the chassis is still being used.
I'd much rather have more battery volume inside the computer with all the USB-C ports directly exposed and then have the option to carry around a USB-C dongle with the extra ports I might need.
Then the Framework just isn't for you. The Framework was designed to be a portable laptop that is also modular and repairable. Apple's design philosophy seems to most closely match yours - only USB-C ports with separate dongles.
Not sure why you assume I don't want a repairable laptop or what some plastic USB-C port extenders have to do with modularity.
Hiding a USB-C hub inside a laptop and calling it "modularity" seems pretty silly.
Maybe if that hub connected to some kind of riser card PCI-E interface and was replaceable I'd take this modularity claim more seriously. At least then I'd be able to replace the whole contraption with NVMe slots, a GPU, 10GigE, etc.
> Maybe if that hub connected to some kind of PCI-E interface and was replaceable I'd take this claim more seriously.
Well congrats, it is connected to PCIe because it's thunderbolt, and there's no hub to need to replace because it has a direct line to the CPU (you can replace the main board if you want).
No you're missing the point. The hub itself is built into the chassis so even if it is thunderbolt, anything non-trivial I would want to connect over that bus doesn't have enough physical space in the computer unless it fits inside that tiny connector design:
I'd rather either have a bank of ports that can be removed as one module and replaced with a single large component or just drop the concept and put more battery in there. These tiny individual modules waste space and don't accomplish much.
So you're saying you don't like the form factor of the expansion slots. Okay, I understand that. But the slots don't connect back to a hub, so it would help if you stopped using the word hub or talking about wanting to replace a supposed hub. It's four independent slots that wire back to the CPU, at least for the high speed wires.
You're talking in circles, the slots, their connectors, and the traces on the board are "a thing to remove" and take up considerable space. I see no point in engaging further with your pedantry trolling.
The traces are taking up roughly zero space. There's nothing to remove except the bit of plastic between the slots.
There is no specific thing that could be removed to satisfy your desire. The difference between removing something and the type of redesign they would have to do isn't pedantry trolling.
The modular ports is probably a good idea, but I also find the chosen module size a bit of a uncomfortable middle ground.
On the one hand, they're too small for some very obvious standard ports you might want on a laptop, like for example an RJ45 port. Or multiple/vertical USB-A ports. And they're too small by a relatively small amount, so if the laptop had aimed more at Thinkpad T size thickness (still not terribly thick) rather than Macbook Air thickness, the modules would have been much more flexible (and maybe we could have had even better keyboard options).
A really significantly sized bay would have been quite interesting too - old T-series used to allow you to add a second battery, a big bay could have allowed breakouts for sensors, fpga add ons, etc. Perhaps allowing a double-wide might have been a good way of addressing both.
On the other hand, the modules are still pretty chunky. You don't want to be using one out of its slot, I don't know what sacrifices were made in terms of space in order to have what in many peoples laptops are going to be pass throughs, but the Framework has a relatively disappointing battery, so perhaps that's an effect of the reserved space.
Could you have one of these slots filled with an usb-c battery? Then at least you keep modularity. But it not add space efficiënt probably as just extending the internal battery.
I personally don't find the card very appealing. I thought Ethernet ports in thin laptops are a solved problem.