Single home... device?

[pfry]

No worries, always enjoying tech discussions, even if only reading along.

Kind of an aside, on appliances: I do miss the Fortigate (or Cisco/Juniper/etc.*) command line. The GUI was nice to look at, but cumbersome to configure. I use either the "?" method (to view command options) or a no-defaults config dump to view every option, then work up a config. OPNsense has somewhat equivalent functionality from a config load/store perspective, but less interactive; while the XML config backups are pretty extensive/complete, for the full set of options, it's necessary to dig through the GUI.

*...but not Xedia or Wellfleet! (Both used SNMP-based configs, so the Bay Networks/Wellfleet base CLI (not BCC) and the Lucent/Xedia CLI were all get/set MIB values. I think even an SNMP guy like Patrick would balk a bit at that... or perhaps not..

[pfry]

[...]Mobo makers (and PSU's)[...]

I'd think (and likely Patrick's point) is that the PSU would be the interface. What would be your PSU -> motherboard link? USB? As I said, I think the concept is interesting, but impractical. It'd be a tough sell to a PSU manufacturer with already bare-bones margins.

Also this, why do we need SFP+ or RJ45 when USB-C[...]

Yak! Neglecting SFP optics, the USB-C connector is a bit of a cluster. While manufacturers may have moved away from purely manual assembly, it's still not a great design. RJ-45 is pretty terrible from an electrical standpoint, but it was designed to be super cheap, yet effective. I can make my own Ethernet cables pretty easily. Heck, I can even make USB-A/B. But C? Then there would be the matter of cable variety - USB-C for USB is bad enough; just imagine the confusion if you have up to 100M USB-C cables for Ethernet.

And, of course, there's the legacy consideration. And as part of that point, isn't Apple doing much the same? USB/Thunderbolt everything?