Another nail in the coffin, I guess! Who in 2022 would release a laptop with a single USB port?! Who except Apple, of course!
On the M1 and M2 machines, however, this is not quite as fair a characterization. After all, the battery life is ~2x that of the Intel MBPs. So you can definitely plug in your iPhone into one port and an external HD into the other and do a backup without worrying about the MBP running out of juice.
Still, I think it's pretty silly that the new MBA has MagSafe + 2x USB-C and the base MBP is still scraping by with just the USB-C. Even the original Touchbar MBPs had more connectivity than that! (The base MBP didn't have the TB, blessedly, so it was only the 4-port machines that had this 'upgrade'.)
*G* sorry, only kidding. The alternatives are really that bad.. it'd actually be kind of amusing except this is my real life.
It's called pseudoscience:
Namnyak et al. (2008) A research group led by Namnyak has found that although there is a lot of media coverage of Stockholm syndrome, there has not been a lot of research into the phenomenon. What little research has been done is often contradictory and does not always agree on what Stockholm syndrome is. The term has grown beyond kidnappings to all definitions of abuse. There is no clear definition of symptoms to diagnose the syndrome.[35]
FBI law enforcement bulletin (1999) A 1998 report by the FBI containing over 1,200 hostage incidents found that only 8% of kidnapping victims showed signs of Stockholm syndrome. When victims who showed negative and positive feelings toward the law enforcement personnel are excluded, the percentage decreases to 5%. A survey of 600 police agencies in 1989, performed by the FBI and the University of Vermont, found not a single case when emotional involvement between the victim and the kidnapper interfered with or jeopardized an assault. In short, this database provides empirical support that the Stockholm syndrome remains a rare occurrence. The sensational nature of dramatic cases causes the public to perceive this phenomenon as the rule rather than the exception. The bulletin concludes that, although depicted in fiction and film and often referred to by the news media, the phenomenon actually occurs rarely. Therefore, crisis negotiators should place the Stockholm syndrome in proper perspective.[7]
Perhaps you're used to MacOS, but functionally, day-to-day there are not many practical differences with Windows unless there is some specific Mac only app you need.
Otherwise I would say Mac laptops are not especially good value, if you just look at the specs at face value.
I recently built a PC for ~$750 with an i7, 16GB ram, 1TB SSD and 3060 ti GPU. Something similar on Mac would cost maybe 3x more.
The above being said, I bought the Mac it exclusively because of hardware. I am aware that you can build much better desktop PC for the money, but I need laptop for my use cases, I don't own any desktop computer and don't plan to.
Going deeper, I only paid around 960 USD for 16/512 configuration (in Europe), and for that kind of money I got great performance, great battery life, very good screen, excellent trackpad and usable keyboard. It's very thin, runs very cool and for the first time I can use laptop more like phone/tablet - only charging it when the battery gets low. Oh, and I have ZERO problems with battery drain during sleep, which on Windows is currently broken (connected standby).
What I also got is mediocre selection of ports and I am not sure how durable the machine is compared to Thinkpad, so I kinda baby it all the time.
YMMV, I personally don't care who uses what but since you asked, above are my points.
So, like e.g. the Dell XPS 13 9300 or the Microsoft Surface Laptop Studio.
(They have 1 other port on top of the M2 MBP, technically, but it's SD card slot - I doubt you had that in mind as what's misisng from the MBP).
Heck, there's also a port-free contender Craob X: https://craob.com/
And don't forget that you can always not buy the machine!