Framework, a laptop manufacturer that sells their laptops mostly on repairabilty while steadily attracting controversy after controversy, has a really cool feature: Modular IO. While on all other laptops, the IO ports are just permanently installed and unchanging other than the more fragile ports gradually breaking, on Framework they can be customized by the user to fit whatever that user needs, with a handful of replaceable modules. What's not to like? On the Framework 13-inch, you get four such modular ports, as well as a headphone jack. The 16-inch version offers 6 IO ports, but the headphone jack only comes in the form of a modular IO port, so effectively it only has one additional port over the 13-inch. As the 13-inch is also cheaper and, from what I've seen, more popular, that will be the main focus.

A 13-inch Framework laptop has 4 IO module slots and a headphone jack. Meanwhile, a MacBook Pro from the generation where people were criticizing the lack of IO has 4 USB-C ports and a headphone jack. The modularity sounds like it would help a lot, but let's try a hypothetical of just wanting to use your laptop at a desk, effectively docked. For starters, you'll want to charge it, to be able to use headphones, and to plug a mouse in. And there's half your IO used up. Now let's say you want an external display, to pull data off a flash drive, and to plug in your phone to charge it and back it up. Now you're one port short. You could always use some sort of multidongle or dock, but you could also use that with the aforementioned MacBook. Where does this become a truly advantageous feature? There are still a variety of other ports that could be useful, even without going beyond standard laptop IO. Connecting a second display, reading SD cards, hooking up to wired networking, or heck, having separate headphone and microphone jacks. All of these could be useful, but the IO port count is limited.

Probably in part due to the fact that there aren't that many slots available anyway, basically every first-party IO module is normal-enough laptop IO. There's USB-A, USB-C, MicroSD, SD, HDMI, DisplayPort, and Ethernet, but there's nothing cool and weird or specialized, with the one exception being the storage modules. This seems less like a way to expand the storage of the laptop and more like a way to have a flash drive that sits flush, but they could still be useful if you have multiple computers. The community has a wide range of cool ideas for ports, but only a few are actually all that easy to get your hands on. There's the so-called snack drawer (though it's not big enough to carry much food), which could mean that whenever you have your laptop with you, you also have some emergency money, a few bandaids, and some tape (or whatever else you choose to put in there), which seems fairly useful. There also are ideas for modules that hide dongles for mice, or that include cell modems or a microcontroller. YouTube commenters have also suggested the modular IO could allow you to put more obscure ports on a modern laptop, for example to interface with old industrial hardware. But, while the snack drawer is within scope of anyone with a 3d printer, the rest are still just prototypes.

As for why such a cool idea ends up being barely useful here, we have to consider the actual physical dimensions of the IO modules. They're too small to fit a VGA port, yes, but they aren't exactly small in general. In terms of space along the side of the laptop, each module uses up about 15% of it, and they go fairly deep into the laptop as well. Much of this space is necessary for structural reinforcement, also, as the modules form part of the bottom of the laptop, which can make larger IO harder to fit, as well as them simply being fairly thin in general. This means the option for an Ethernet port has it somewhat bulging down from the laptop. While I'm not enough of a lawyer to fully understand the situation, I have heard that Framework has patented their module design, providing another challenge for even creating some of the more interesting modules.

I don't think modular IO is strictly a bad idea, however. Imagine a laptop similar in size to the classic hacker laptop, the ThinkPad T480. Along the left side of the laptop, let's say there's two USB-C ports which can also be used for charging, two USB-A ports, a headphone jack, and an SD card slot. The rear of the laptop could then have an HDMI port, DisplayPort, and an Ethernet port. Finally, the left side of the laptop has one last USB-C port (also usable for charging), and two or three modular ports that are a bit wider and taller than those used on Framework, but a bit less deep. Suddenly the previous hypothetical leaves us with ports to spare and using the modular IO for something more interesting becomes entirely practical. Even if just the USB ports and headphone jack weren't modular, it'd still be a significant advantage over the Framework. I don't think modular IO for everything is in any way a good idea, and I have my doubts about modular IO on any laptop that's at least somewhat optimizing for thinness, but this is a genuinely cool feature that I'd love to see given a better implementation.