I haven’t seen a new product with USB-A in years. It’s long past time to move on.

I just bought a few 8bitdo controllers, wired and bluetooth, both. These are basically the best-bang-for-the-buck low- to mid-priced controllers around, super-popular in gaming circles. Best you'll get without bumping up to modern 1st party console controllers at $70+ each. I bought these within the last 30 days.

The wired controller is USB-A. The bluetooth controllers "are" USB-C... but came with A-to-C cables, not C-to-C.

Approximately every time I want to plug something in to my laptop that's not a charging cable for another device, it's USB-A.

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jabroni_salad a day ago | parent | prev | next [-]

This past calendar year I bought a new document scanner, controller, mouse, and DAC that all came with usb-A on the computer end of the included cable. On the peripheral side, I must not have done enough research on 'new' products because only the DAC and mouse have USB-C. Brother's document scanners in 2026 ship with the incredibly horrible usb-3-micro-b and the controller uses a low latency wireless dongle on usb-a.

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NikolaNovak a day ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Keyboard, printer, mouse, joystick, scanner,color calibrator, steering wheel, game controller , everything I bought recently other than external ssd was usb a. Even, shockingly, a nice Scarlett audio interface!

More to the point, anything I'd want to plug in to a gaming machine, is usb a.

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whyoh a day ago | parent | prev | next [-]

You must be living in some (Apple?) bubble.

Most new gaming mice and keyboards sold in 2026 use USB A. Not to mention all the older ones that still work.

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topgrain2 a day ago | parent | next [-]

I can vouch for this still not really being true even in Apple-land, since almost any peripheral, external disk, printer, whatever, that I'll want to plug in isn't gonna be from Apple.

In 2026 the single most useful port to add to my Macs would be USB-A, with no close competition. On any device with 2+ USB-C ports, it'd easily be worth sacrificing a USB-C to get a USB-A.

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Gigachad a day ago | parent | prev [-]

Pretty much the only things I plug in to my computer are a monitor which is usb c. And my external ssd which is usb c.

Most devices have a cable that’s fully replaceable so you can choose to use C to C or C to A but basically everything has usb C on the device end.

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whyoh a day ago | parent [-]

>basically everything has usb C on the device end

Yes, but we're talking about the ports on the Steam Machine, so the host end is what matters. And gaming peripherals are likely even more skewed towards USB A, because Macs are not the main target for that.

	▲	Gigachad a day ago \| parent [-]
		If it has USB-C on one end then you can use a C to C cable or a C to A so it doesn't really matter. It's not a show stopper either way but I've long wanted to slim down my birds nest of cables. Since my laptop and phone are USB-C I can get by with C to C cables only so I probably wouldn't get a computer that required me to double the number of cables I have to keep.

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asdff a day ago | parent | prev [-]

Tell that to logitech.