[caladri]

This seems like a silly point to pick on. Why is the MBP so thin? Because of design considerations and the desires of the target market. The design considerations are a serious component of the Apple brand, perhaps the single most distinguishing component. To compromise on the design to work-around the thinness which is in service to the design would just be pointless.

It may not be accurate and complete and without flaw, but it is a reasonable reduction of the reality of Apple hardware to an understandable and useful form. The difference in thickness is profound, and would have been compromised itself, or have forced a compromise elsewhere in the design of the base hardware platform, without the removal of the Ethernet port due to physical space constraints that arose from the level of space reduction that was possible with this revision of hardware.

I think that's a pretty interesting point. The Thunderbolt adapter is a design compromise and a crappy one, but it is a general-purpose one (i.e. there is a consistent peripheral platform) and one that will not impact the vast majority of users. Copper Ethernet is not at the top of Apple laptop users' desire, as one might note conversely design is. There's a sort of elegance in systematizing the edge cases and making the base case streamlined, minimal, satisfactory, beautiful and shockingly-thin.