Comment by wlesieutre

Apple should show users an alert when they plug a USB-3 device into the USB-2 port because they are visually identical

Oh wait https://i.imgur.com/7HWgxZ1.png

I don't know the details of Apple's silicon designs, but I assume the USB port bandwidth is because this is using the chip from iPhone 16 Pro, a phone which of course had a single USB-3 port. They've done what they can with it to hit the price point.

The alternative was to not include a second USB port for charging, in which case people would be bitching about it not being able to use peripherals while charging like the last time they made a single port laptop.