If there’s one thing people who buy high-end camera equipment simply cannot afford, it’s a $10 flash card reader. The new iMac also does not come with a floppy drive, Zip drive or SCSI support.

$10? Do Apple sell them that cheaply? https://www.apple.com/shop/mac/accessories/power-cables Why sell for $10 what can be sold for $40.

That's somewhat beside the point that requiring additional cables and dongles isn't as nice of a user experience compared to a system which doesn't need that. It means the design is useful to fewer people, and arguably a less useful design overall. -- Maybe not an issue for Zip drives; probably more of an issue for the SD Card.

It also only has 4 USB C ports. The 2010 iMac had no less than 9 ports (more if you included the one on the keyboard) plus an optical drive. These new machines are not appealing to me at all.

I’m old enough to remember when they complained about Macs not having parallel ports. …And yet, Macs still work adequately. (Parallel ports!) For years now I’ve had a 27” iMac and a homebuilt PC on my desk, for mechanical and electrical design, embedded work, and VR development. I use both, happily. Toolchains tend to work on both. Never understood the Mac vs PC jingoism myself; in this old hacker’s opinion, “upgradeability” generally was a legacy of the 90s when components were more dear. I rarely “upgrade” in a box’s lifecycle beyond adding storage. I certainly don’t add more RAM or swap CPUs after the purchase date. I would say, it is fun building a PC to be “just so.”