True, but having multiple USB ports *is* actually useful sometimes. USB can be extended by hubs to theoretically an infinite number of ports, but in the end the bandwidth available to all devices has a hard limit per-controller.

i.e. If you turn 1 USB port from your laptop into 50, they have to share the 480Mbps between all of them.

Whereas if you had second USB port you've essentially doubled the "total available bandwidth" you have. This is useful for people who attach lots of external drives to their machines, or people who do USB TV tuners, as they're very bandwidth-demanding.

@potato: are you really jonesing for 5 low-speed ports that bad? whoooo 4Mb/s!

@ars_workerbee:

Or an extra high-speed port, doubling his effective 480mbps bandwidth to 960mbps.

I thought it was interesting...

Shadup!

@Luigi193

i suppose you were likewise amazed to find out that the PPC mac minis had an unused firewire pinout on the board, too, right?

Actually Luigi, yeah. I'm a gadget freak in both senses - I love playing with them, and I love hacking them. This is definitely an interesting revelation for me.

I thought it was interesting too, why don't you go write your own blog instead of heckling Erica.

you haven't seen any of the macbook air disassembly pics, have you? there's no room.

My grand scheme is coming together... the next version of the carbon fiber back will have space for an SD card reader that I'll wire internally.

you're from macrumors :)

I didn't actually prove there are SATA signals on that connector, but it would make sense because of its location next to the I/O chip. The connector was too hard to probe - I was afraid I might short something out.
- John Maushammer
(p.s. trying to change my username here; sorry about the confusion!)